Friday, April 25, 2008

Evolution


The ability to convert light energy to chemical energy confers a significant evolutionary advantage to living organisms. Early photosynthetic systems, such as those from green and purple sulfur and green and purple non-sulfur bacteria, are thought to have been anoxygenic, using various molecules as electron donors. Green and purple sulfur bacteria are thought to have used hydrogen and sulfur as an electron donor. Green nonsulfur bacteria used various amino and other organic acids. Purple nonsulfur bacteria used a variety of non-specific organic molecules. The use of these molecules is consistent with the geological evidence that the atmosphere was highly reduced at that time.
Fossils of what are thought to be filamentous photosynthetic organisms have been dated at 3.4 billion years old.[
Oxygen in the atmosphere exists due to the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis, sometimes referred to as the oxygen catastrophe. Geological evidence suggests that oxygenic photosynthesis, such as that in cyanobacteria, became important during the Paleoproterozoic era around 2 billion years ago. Modern photosynthesis in plants and most photosynthetic prokaryotes is oxygenic. Oxygenic photosynthesis uses water as an electron donor which is oxidized into molecular oxygen by the absorption of a photon by the photosynthetic reaction center

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