#MolecularClock analysis shows #bacteria used oxygen long before widespread photosynthesis
phys.org/news/2025-04-molecula…
A geological timescale for bacterial #evolution and oxygen adaptation science.org/doi/10.1126/scienc…
"the earliest aerobic transition occurred in an ancestor of photosynthetic #cyanobacteria, indicating that the ability to utilize trace amounts of oxygen may have allowed the development of genes central to oxygenic #photosynthesis."
Molecular clock analysis shows bacteria used oxygen long before widespread photosynthesis
Microbial organisms dominate life on Earth, but tracing their early history and evolution is difficult because they rarely fossilize. Determining when exactly a particular group of microbes first appeared is especially hard.Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (Phys.org)