Oxidative metabolisms catalyzed Earth’s oxygenation

Shang, Haitao; Rothman, Daniel H.; Fournier, Gregory P.

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-28996-0

Cited by 24 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…The diversification of SAR202 before the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere suggests that this group emerged during an oxygen oasis proposed to have existed in pre-GOE Earth 24–26 . The ancient pre-GOE origin of SAR202 is consistent with a recent study that proposed that this clade played a role in the shift of the redox state of the atmosphere during the GOE by partially metabolizing organic matter through a flavin dependent Baeyer–Villiger monooxygenase, thereby enhancing the burial of organic matter and contributing to the net accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere 27,28 . After the GOE, we detected the diversification of aerobic Ca .…”

Section: Main Textsupporting

confidence: 87%

A Timeline of Bacterial and Archaeal Diversification in the Ocean

Martínez-Gutiérrez

Uyeda

Aylward

2022

Preprint

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Microbial plankton play a central role in marine biogeochemical cycles, but the timing in which abundant lineages colonized contemporary ocean environments remains unclear. Here, we reconstructed the geological dates in which major clades of bacteria and archaea colonized the ocean using a high-resolution benchmarked phylogenetic tree that allows for simultaneous and direct comparison of the ages of multiple divergent lineages. Our findings show that the diversification of the most prevalent marine clades is the result of three main phases of colonization that coincide with major oxygenation events. The first phase took place after the initial oxygenation of the planet that occurred at the time of the Great Oxidation Event (2.4-2.2 Ga), after which several lineages that proliferate in oxygen minimum zones today first colonized marine niches. The second phase began around the time of the Neoproterozoic Oxidation Event (0.8-0.4 Ga) and included the diversification of the most abundant heterotrophic bacterial clades, consistent with the hypothesis that their diversification is linked to the emergence of large eukaryotic phytoplankton. The last phase encompasses prevalent cyanobacterial lineages and occurred after the Phanerozoic Oxidation Event (0.45-0.4 Ga), coinciding with the formation of the contemporary oligotrophic ocean. Our work clarifies the timing at which abundant lineages of bacteria and archaea colonized the ocean, links their adaptive radiations with key geological events, and demonstrates that the redox state of the ocean throughout Earth's history has been the primary factor shaping the diversification of the most prevalent marine microbial clades.

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Section: Main Textsupporting

confidence: 87%

A Timeline of Bacterial and Archaeal Diversification in the Ocean

Martínez-Gutiérrez

Uyeda

Aylward

2022

Preprint

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“…Incorporating the theoretical results presented here, especially the preservation efficiency function, with geochemical identification of the specific types of buried organic compounds in deep time and laboratory measurements of their effective activation energy, into global-scale biogeochemical models 65,66 may provide new perspectives on significant events in the evolution of Earth's carbon and oxygen cycles, such as carbon isotope excursions 67,68 and atmosphere-ocean oxygenation 69,70 , over geologic timescales.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A generic hierarchical model of organic matter degradation and preservation in aquatic systems

Shang

2023

Commun Earth Environ

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Organic matter degradation and preservation are crucial components of Earth’s carbon cycle. Empirical and phenomenological models usually contain parameters determined by site-specific data and focus on different aspects of the decay and accretion characteristics. To investigate more fundamental mechanisms, this study suggests a hierarchical model that links microscopic physical quantities to macroscopic degradation and preservation patterns. This mechanistic model predicts several commonly observed phenomena, including the lognormal distribution of degradation rate constants, the recalcitrance-dependent sensitivity to temperature, the dependence of a heterogeneous organic-matter system’s persistence on its complexity, logarithmic-time decay, and power-law degradation behavior. The theoretical predictions of this model are consistent with the observational data from marine and lake environments. This hierarchical model may provide a step towards a fundamental theory of organic matter degradation and preservation in aquatic and other ecosystems.

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“…It follows, therefore, that the periodic reappearance of S-MIF in the Timeball Hill Formation may signal a protracted, intermediate, and extremely sensitive atmospheric state that was uniquely susceptible to perturbation as oxygen contents vacillated around the threshold for S-MIF genesis and preservation. Speculatively, such a state could have been established and maintained through the interplay of biological feedbacks 54,55 encountered as organisms gradually evolved the biochemical machinery to thrive in increasingly more oxidising regimes 5 . Superimposed on this intermediary atmospheric state, large injections of reducing gasses, perhaps sourced via the emplacement of large igneous provinces or, more likely, through climate-paced methane fluxes, could have episodically outpaced the biological O 2 flux to ephemerally reinstate S-MIF production 56 .…”

Section: Implications For the Operation Of The Atmosphere After 233 Gamentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconciling discrepant minor sulfur isotope records of the Great Oxidation Event

Uveges

Izon²,

Ono³

et al. 2023

Nat Commun

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Understanding the timing and trajectory of atmospheric oxygenation remains fundamental to deciphering its causes and consequences. Given its origin in oxygen-free photochemistry, mass-independent sulfur isotope fractionation (S-MIF) is widely accepted as a geochemical fingerprint of an anoxic atmosphere. Nevertheless, S-MIF recycling through oxidative sulfide weathering—commonly termed the crustal memory effect (CME)—potentially decouples the multiple sulfur isotope (MSI) record from coeval atmospheric chemistry. Herein, however, after accounting for unrecognised temporal and spatial biases within the Archaean–early-Palaeoproterozoic MSI record, we demonstrate that the global expression of the CME is barely resolvable; thereby validating S-MIF as a tracer of contemporaneous atmospheric chemistry during Earth’s incipient oxygenation. Next, utilising statistical approaches, supported by new MSI data, we show that the reconciliation of adjacent, yet seemingly discrepant, South African MSI records requires that the rare instances of post-2.3-billion-year-old S-MIF are stratigraphically restricted. Accepting others’ primary photochemical interpretation, our approach demands that these implied atmospheric dynamics were ephemeral, operating on sub-hundred-thousand-year timescales. Importantly, these apparent atmospheric relapses were fundamentally different from older putative oxygenation episodes, implicating an intermediate, and potentially uniquely feedback-sensitive, Earth system state in the wake of the Great Oxidation Event.

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Oxidative metabolisms catalyzed Earth’s oxygenation

Cited by 24 publications

References 72 publications

A Timeline of Bacterial and Archaeal Diversification in the Ocean

A Timeline of Bacterial and Archaeal Diversification in the Ocean

A generic hierarchical model of organic matter degradation and preservation in aquatic systems

Reconciling discrepant minor sulfur isotope records of the Great Oxidation Event

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