That depends on what mean by "cyanobacteria," and what kind of photosynthesis you have in mind.
Photosynthesis is the conversion of light energy into chemical energy that an organism can use as fuel. There are two different kinds of photosynthesis -- oxygenic and anoxygenic. Oxygenic photosynthesis releases oxygen as a byproduct; anoxygenic photosynthesis does not.
There is widespread agreement among biologists that cyanobacteria were the first organisms to engage in oxygenic photosynthesis. However, the first photosynthesizing organisms ("phototrophs") may have been the ancestors of cyanobacteria.
Although biologists are still attempting to reconstruct this evolutionary history, the emerging consensus is that anoxygenic photosynthesis evolved first. In 2006, Armen Mulkidjanian and his colleagues conducted a genetic study of extant photosynthesizing bacteria species in order to reconstruct the likely evolution of photosynthesis. Their results led them to argue that the first photosynthesizing organisms were anoxygenic ancestors of cyanobacteria (see pnas.org link below). Later, these ancestral, photosynthesizing organisms gave rise to oxygenic cyanobacteria.
These events are thought to have taken place between about 3.5 and 2.5 billion years ago. After the emergence of oxygen-producing cyanobacteria, huge volumes of oxygen were pumped into the earth's atmosphere for the first time.
https://www.livescience.com/51720-photosynthesis.html
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125654.200-revealing-the-dawn-of-photosynthesis/
https://www.pnas.org/content/103/35/13126.full
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Is it probable that cyanobacteria were the first organisms to photosynthesize?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
No comments:
Post a Comment