July 14, 2019
Earth's atmosphere oxygenated fairly late, long after photosynthesis-using bacteria appeared. Why?
New research suggests an answer:
[...]
Modern photosynthesizers consume water and release oxygen. Primitive ones instead consume dissolved iron ions—which would have been abundant in the oceans of early Earth. They produce rust as a byproduct instead of oxygen.
Using experimental microbiology, genomics, and large-scale biogeochemical modeling, "we found that photosynthetic bacteria that use iron instead of water are fierce competitors for light and nutrients," says Ozaki, the paper's first author and now an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science at Toho University, in Japan. "We propose that their ability to outcompete oxygen-producing photosynthesizers is an important component of Earth's global oxygen cycle."
Interesting; rust kept the planet from becoming an oxygen rich world. Was this what happened to Mars? Mars has a lot of rust on the surface, after all.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
09:43 AM
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