The Archean origin of oxygenic photosynthesis and extant cyanobacterial lineages
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rspb.2021.0675.pdf
Description
Published version
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706.84 KB
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Author(s)
Fournier, GP
Moore, KR
Rangel, LT
Payette, JG
Momper, L
Bosak, T
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Publisher
The Royal Society
Citation
Fournier, GP, Moore, KR, Rangel, LT, Payette, JG, Momper, L et al. 2021. "The Archean origin of oxygenic photosynthesis and extant cyanobacterial lineages." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 288 (1959).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The record of the coevolution of oxygenic phototrophs and the environment is preserved in three forms: genomes of modern organisms, diverse geochemical signals of surface oxidation and diagnostic Proterozoic microfossils. When calibrated by fossils, genomic data form the basis of molecular clock analyses. However, different interpretations of the geochemical record, fossil calibrations and evolutionary models produce a wide range of age estimates that are often conflicting. Here, we show that multiple interpretations of the cyanobacterial fossil record are consistent with an Archean origin of crown-group Cyanobacteria. We further show that incorporating relative dating information from horizontal gene transfers greatly improves the precision of these age estimates, by both providing a novel empirical criterion for selecting evolutionary models, and increasing the stringency of sampling of posterior age estimates. Independent of any geochemical evidence or hypotheses, these results support oxygenic photosynthesis evolving at least several hundred million years before the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE), a rapid diversification of major cyanobacterial lineages around the time of the GOE, and a post-Cryogenian origin of extant marine picocyanobacterial diversity.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1098/RSPB.2021.0675
