This document discusses the earliest forms of life on Earth, including photosynthetic and nitrogen-fixing prokaryotes. It states that the first life forms likely resembled present-day anaerobic bacteria and developed around 3.5 billion years ago. The earliest photosynthetic bacteria could not produce oxygen, but instead obtained hydrogen from inorganic compounds to carry out photosynthesis. The development of oxygen-producing photosynthesis was an important later development that allowed more complex life to evolve.
This document discusses the earliest forms of life on Earth, including photosynthetic and nitrogen-fixing prokaryotes. It states that the first life forms likely resembled present-day anaerobic bacteria and developed around 3.5 billion years ago. The earliest photosynthetic bacteria could not produce oxygen, but instead obtained hydrogen from inorganic compounds to carry out photosynthesis. The development of oxygen-producing photosynthesis was an important later development that allowed more complex life to evolve.
This document discusses the earliest forms of life on Earth, including photosynthetic and nitrogen-fixing prokaryotes. It states that the first life forms likely resembled present-day anaerobic bacteria and developed around 3.5 billion years ago. The earliest photosynthetic bacteria could not produce oxygen, but instead obtained hydrogen from inorganic compounds to carry out photosynthesis. The development of oxygen-producing photosynthesis was an important later development that allowed more complex life to evolve.
This document discusses the earliest forms of life on Earth, including photosynthetic and nitrogen-fixing prokaryotes. It states that the first life forms likely resembled present-day anaerobic bacteria and developed around 3.5 billion years ago. The earliest photosynthetic bacteria could not produce oxygen, but instead obtained hydrogen from inorganic compounds to carry out photosynthesis. The development of oxygen-producing photosynthesis was an important later development that allowed more complex life to evolve.
extremely resistant to heat and further desiccation.
Under suitable conditions, the spores can germinate and renew their vegetative growth. Spore formation is one of several examples of the development of specialized cells or differentiation among prokaryotes.
8. Photosynthetic and Nitrogen-Fixing
Prokaryotes It is likely that the earth was once a completely anaerobic place containing water, ammonia, methane, formaldehyde, and more complicated organic compounds. Perhaps the first forms of life, which may have originated about 3.5 x 109 years ago, resembled present-day anaerobic bacteria. The purple and green
photosynthetic bacteria may be related to organisms
that developed at a second stage of evolution: those able to capture energy from sunlight. Most of these gram-negative photosynthetic bacteria are strict anaerobes. None can make oxygen as do higher plants. Rather, the hydrogen needed to carry out the reduction of carbon dioxide in the photosynthetic process is obtained by the splitting of inorganic compounds, such as H2S, thiosulfate, or H2, or is taken from organic compounds. Today, photosynthetic bacteria are found principally in sulfur springs and in deep lakes, but at one time they were probably far more abundant and the only photosynthetic organisms on earth. Before organisms could produce oxygen a second complete photosynthetic system, which could cleave H2O to O2, had to be developed. The simplest oxygen-
BOX 1-C IN THE BEGINNING
No one knows how life began. Theories ranging from the biblical accounts to recent ideas about the role of RNA are plentiful but largely unsatisfying. In the 1800s the great physical chemist Arrhenius was among scientists that preferred the idea held by some scientists today that a seed came from outer space. Until recently the only concrete data came from fossils. Making use of a variety of isotopic dating methods it can be concluded that cyanobacteria were present 2.2 109 years ago and eukaryotes 1.4 109 years ago. About 0.5 109 years ago the Cambrian explosion led to the appearance of virtually all known animal phyla. Many of these then became extinct about 0.2 109 years ago. New insights published in 1859a were provided by Charles Darwin. However, his ideas were only put into a context of biochemical data after 1950 when sequencing of proteins and later nucleic acids began. From an astonishingly large library of sequence data available now we can draw one firm conclusion: Evolution can be observed;b it does involve mutation of DNA. Comparisons of sequences among many species allow evolutionary relationships to be proposed.c-e In general these are very similar to those deduced from the fossil record. They support the idea that evolution occurs by natural selection and that duplication of genes and movements of large pieces of DNA within the genome have occurred often. As many as 900 ancient conserved regions of DNA in the E. coli genome corresponding to those in human, nematode, and yeast DNA are thought to date back perhaps 3.5 109 years.f However, nobody has explained how life evolved before there was DNA. One of the first scientists to devote his career to biochemical evolution was I. V. Oparin,g who
published a book on the origin of life in 1924.
Oparin and J. B. S. Haldane, independently, proposed that early life was anaerobic and that energy was provided by fermentation. In 1951 Stanley Miller built an apparatus that circulated CH4, NH3, H2O, and H2, compounds thought to be present in a primitive atmosphere, past an electric discharge. He found glycine, alanine, -alanine, and other amino acids among the products formed.h Schrdinger pointed out that a flux of energy through a system will tend to organize the system. The solar energy passing through the biosphere induces atmospheric circulation and patterns of weather and ocean currents.i,j Perhaps in the primordeal oceans organic compounds arose from the action of light and lightning discharges. These compounds became catalysts for other reactions which eventually evolved into a rudimentary cell-less metabolism. It is a large jump from this to a cell! Among other problems is the lack of any explanation for the development of individual cells or of their genomes. However, because it helps to correlate much information we will always take an evolutionary approach in this book and will discuss the beginnings a little more in later chapters. a b c d e f g h i j
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