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A new high resolution microbial time #tree calibrated using the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) ~2.33 billion years ago highlights the evolution of aerobic lifestyles in #bacteria. Most bacteria were ancestrally anaerobic (Bacillota/Firmicutes are the oldest) and the transition to an aerobic lifestyle was initiated by Cyanobacteria, which seeded #oxygen production and consumption capabilities to the broader bacterial tree over hundreds of millions of years.

biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20…

“A species tree of Bacteria, with branches coloured according to predicted ability to grow in the presence of oxygen (red, aerobic; blue, anaerobic). The external disc shows observed (dark colours) or predicted (light colours) oxygen use phenotypes for extant genomes. Major bacterial phyla (with more than 15 genomes in our tree) are named and delimited by shading. Branch lengths are proportional to the expected number of substitutions per site, as indicated by the scale bar.” https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.08.08.552427

An evolutionary timescale for Bacteria calibrated using the Great Oxidation Event

Most of life's diversity and history is microbial but it has left a meagre fossil record, greatly hindering understanding of evolution in deep time.
bioRxiv
#tree #bacteria #oxygen
in reply to Otti Croze

Frank Aylward
mastodon - Link to source
Frank Aylward
• •

we actually published a calibrated tree of life using similar approaches recently
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre…

We received some pushback for using the GOE for calibration (all reviews and responses are public). It will be interesting to see how that plays out here.

A Timeline of Bacterial and Archaeal Diversification in the Ocean

elifesciences.org
in reply to Frank Aylward

James Marsh
mastodon - Link to source
James Marsh
• •
Agreed. I've noticed that calibration methods for molecular dating in bacteria and archaea can be a topic of discussion. Any attempt is admirable in my book - thanks for sharing the link!

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