Modern cyanobacteria?

2002/10/28 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Eboluzioa
• Mikrobiologia

In biology books it is said that cyanobacteria are one of the oldest and, in addition, they are the main causes of the oxygen we have in the current atmosphere. However, this conviction can be turned upside down according to a recent theory.

Carrine Blanks, University of Washington, has analyzed 38 genes from 53 species of bacteria. By tracking the less altered genes between these genes, you have formed a tree that can explain the evolution of bacteria. According to this tree, cyanobacteria were born 100 million years later than expected, that is, they are more modern than expected.

If this is true, cyanobacteria cannot cause atmospheric oxygen. This would explain the lack of cyanobacteria fossils in the stones of those times, as well as the developed metabolism that these cells have. Therefore, Blanks believes that cyanobacteria evolved from much more primitive bacteria. Atmospheric oxygen, on the other hand, is due to another unknown biochemical process.