EVIDENCES OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS

TEACHER: MA’AM PRECY ANN CAMACHO

RESEARCHER: CRYSTALLE LONGANILLA

ARTICLE 1: Evidence for oxygenic photosynthesis half a billion

years before the Great Oxidation Event.
ABSTRACT
The early Earth was characterized by the absence of oxygen in the ocean–
atmosphere system, in contrast to the well-oxygenated conditions that prevail today.
Atmospheric concentrations first rose to appreciable levels during the Great Oxidation
Event, roughly 2.5–2.3 Gyr ago. The evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis is generally
accepted to have been the ultimate cause of this rise, but it has proved difficult to
constrain the timing of this evolutionary innovation. The oxidation of manganese in the
water column requires substantial free oxygen concentrations, and thus any indication
that Mn oxides were present in ancient environments would imply that oxygenic
photosynthesis was ongoing. Mn oxides are not commonly preserved in ancient rocks,
but there is a large fractionation of molybdenum isotopes associated with the sorption
of Mo onto the Mn oxides that would be retained. Here we report Mo isotopes from
rocks of the Sinqeni Formation, Pongola Supergroup, South Africa. These rocks
formed no less than 2.95 Gyr ago in a nearshore setting. The Mo isotopic signature is
consistent with interaction with Mn oxides. We therefore infer that oxygen produced
through oxygenic photosynthesis began to accumulate in shallow marine settings at
least half a billion years before the accumulation of significant levels of atmospheric
oxygen.
REFERENCE:
Planaysky, N., Asael, D., Hofmann, A. et al. Evidence for oxygenic photosynthesis half
a billionyears before the Great Oxidation Event. Nature Geosci 7, 283–286
(2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2122\

ARTICLE 2: Geological constraints on the origin of oxygenic

photosynthesis

ABSTRACT

This article examines the geological evidence for the rise of atmospheric
oxygen and the origin of oxygenic photosynthesis. The evidence for the rise of
atmospheric oxygen places a minimum time constraint before which oxygenic
photosynthesis must have developed, and was subsequently established as the
primary control on the atmospheric oxygen level. The geological evidence places the
global rise of atmospheric oxygen, termed the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), between
~2.45 and ~2.32 Ga, and it is captured within the Deutschland Formation, which shows
a transition from mass-independent to mass-dependent sulfur isotope fractionation.
The rise of atmospheric oxygen during this interval is closely associated with several
environmental changes, such as glaciations and intense continental weathering, and
led to dramatic changes in the oxidation state of the ocean and the seawater inventory
of transition elements. There are other features of the geologic record predating the
GOE by as much as 200–300 million years, perhaps extending as far back as the
Mesoarchean–Neoarchean boundary at 2.8 Ga, that suggest the presence of low
level, transient or local, oxygenation. If verified, these features would not only imply an
earlier origin for oxygenic photosynthesis, but also require a mechanism to decouple
oxygen production from oxidation of Earth’s surface environments. Most hypotheses
for the GOE suggest that oxygen production by oxygenic photosynthesis is a
precondition for the rise of oxygen, but that a synchronous change in atmospheric
oxygen level is not required by the onset of this oxygen source. The potential lag-time
in the response of Earth surface environments is related to the way that oxygen sinks,
such as reduced Fe and sulfur compounds, respond to oxygen production. Changes
in oxygen level imply an imbalance in the sources and sinks for oxygen. Changes in
the cycling of oxygen have occurred at various times before and after the GOE, and
do not appear to require corresponding changes in the intensity of oxygenic
photosynthesis. The available geological constraints for these changes do not,
however, disallow a direct role for this metabolism. The geological evidence for early
oxygen and hypotheses for the controls on oxygen level are the basis for the
interpretation of photosynthetic oxygen production as examined in this review.
REFERENCE:
Farquhar, J., Zerkle, A.L. & Bekker, A. Geological constraints on the origin of
oxygenic photosynthesis. Photosynth Res 107, 11–36 (2011).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-010-9594-0

ARTICLE 3: EARLY EVOLUTION OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS

Photosynthesis is the only significant solar energy storage process on Earth
and is the source of all our food and most of our energy resources. An understanding
of the origin and evolution of photosynthesis is therefore of substantial interest, as it
may help to explain inefficiencies in the process and point the way to attempts to
improve various aspects for agricultural and energy applications. A wealth of evidence
indicates that photosynthesis is an ancient process that originated not long after the
origin of life and has evolved via a complex path to produce the distribution of types of
photosynthetic organisms and metabolisms that are found today (Blankenship,
2002; Björn and Govindjee, 2009). Figure 1 shows an evolutionary tree of life based
on small-subunit rRNA analysis. Of the three domains of life, Bacteria, Archaea, and
Eukarya, chlorophyll-based photosynthesis has only been found in the bacterial and
eukaryotic domains. The ability to do photosynthesis is widely distributed throughout
the bacterial domain in six different phyla, with no apparent pattern of evolution.
Photosynthetic phyla include the cyanobacteria, proteobacteria (purple bacteria),
green sulfur bacteria (GSB), firmicutes (heliobacteria), filamentous anoxygenic
phototrophs (FAPs, also often called the green nonsulfur bacteria), and acidobacteria
(Raymond, 2008). In some cases (cyanobacteria and GSB), essentially all members
of the phylum are phototrop2hic, while in the others, the proteobacteria, most species
are not phototrophic.
We know very little about the earliest origins of photosynthesis. There have
been numerous suggestions as to where and how the process originated, but there is
no direct evidence to support any of the possible origins (Olson and Blankenship,
2004). There is suggestive evidence that photosynthetic organisms were present
approximately 3.2 to 3.5 billion years ago, in the form of stromatolites, layered
structures similar to forms that are produced by some modern cyanobacteria, as well
as numerous microfossils that have been interpreted as arising from phototrophs (Des
Marais, 2000). In all these cases, phototrophs are not certain to have been the source
of the fossils, but are inferred from the morphology or geological context. There is also
isotopic evidence for autotrophic carbon fixation at 3.7 to 3.8 billion years ago,
although there is nothing that indicates that these organisms were photosynthetic. All
these claims for early photosynthesis are highly controversial and have engendered a
great deal of spirited discussion in the literature (Buick, 2008). Evidence for the timing
of the origin of oxygenic photosynthesis and the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere is
discussed below. The accumulated evidence suggests that photosynthesis began
early in Earth’s history, but was probably not one of the earliest metabolisms and that
the earliest forms of photosynthesis were anoxygenic, with oxygenic forms arising
significantly later.

REFERENCE:
Blankenship, R. E. (2010). Early Evolution of Photosynthesis. Plant Physiology,
154(2), 434-438. https://doi.org/10.1104/pp.110.161687