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Archaean Green-light Environments Drove the Evolution of Cyanobacteria’s Light-harvesting System by Taro Matsuo 1,2 , Kumiko Ito-Miwa 1,2, Yosuke Hoshino3,4, is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Archaean Green-light Environments Drove the Evolution of Cyanobacteria’s Light-harvesting System about?

Nature Ecology & Evolution, doi:10.1038/s41559-025-02637-3Cyanobacteria induced the great oxidation event around 2.4 billion years ago, probably triggering the rise in aerobic biodiversity. While chlorophylls are universal pigments used by all phototrophic organisms, cyanobacteria use additional pigments called phycobilins for their light-harvesting antennas—phycobilisomes—to absorb light energy at complementary wavelengths to chlorophylls. Nonetheless, an enigma persists: why did cyanobacteria need phycobilisomes? Here, we demonstrate through numerical simulations that the underwater light spectrum during the Archaean era was probably predominantly green owing to oxidized Fe(III) precipitation. The green-light environments, probably shaped by photosynthetic organisms, may have directed their own photosynthetic evolution. Genetic engineering of extant cyanobacteria, simulating past natural selection, suggests that cyanobacteria that acquired a green-specialized phycobilin called phycoerythrobilin could have fourished under green-light environments. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that the common ancestor of modern cyanobacteria embraced all key components of phycobilisomes to establ

Author

Taro Matsuo 1,2 , Kumiko Ito-Miwa 1,2, Yosuke Hoshino3,4,

Publisher

x

Published

2025

Language

EN