ArticleOrigins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life2016
Timescales of Oxygenation Following the Evolution of Oxygenic Photosynthesis.
Article in Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 110 citations in OpenAlex.
- How low can they go? Aerobic respiration by microorganisms under apparent anoxia.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2022Pooled it
- The chemistry of habitable oceans in the Solar system.Nature communications · 2026Review
- Oxygen reductase origin followed the great oxidation event and terminated the Lomagundi excursion.Biochimica et biophysica acta. Bioenergetics · 2026Article
- Revisiting the greatness of Earth's great oxidation.Communications earth & environment · 2026Review
- A diverse Palaeoproterozoic microbial ecosystem implies early eukaryogenesis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Aerobic nitrogen cycle 100 My before permanent atmospheric oxygenation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Distribution of early-branching Cyanobacteriia and the potential habitats that gave rise to the earliest oxygenic phototrophs.mSphere · 2025Article
- A reassessment of the "hard-steps" model for the evolution of intelligent life.Science advances · 2025Review
- Iron: Life's primeval transition metal.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Structure Function Studies of Photosystem II Using X-Ray Free Electron Lasers.Annual review of biophysics · 2024Review
- Article
- On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Archean phosphorus recycling facilitated by ultraviolet radiation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Article
- Omics-Inferred Partitioning and Expression of Diverse Biogeochemical Functions in a Low-OmSystems · 2021Article
- The Great Oxygenation Event as a consequence of ecological dynamics modulated by planetary change.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Article
- The Archean atmosphere.Science advances · 2020Review
- Geochemical and Metagenomic Characterization of Jinata Onsen, a Proterozoic-Analog Hot Spring, Reveals Novel Microbial Diversity including Iron-Tolerant Phototrophs and Thermophilic Lithotrophs.Microbes and environments · 2019Article
- Early Archean origin of Photosystem II.Geobiology · 2019Article
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3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Among the most important bioenergetic innovations in the history of life was the invention of oxygenic photosynthesis-autotrophic growth by splitting water with sunlight-by Cyanobacteria. It is widely accepted that the invention of oxygenic photosynthesis ultimately resulted in the rise of oxygen by ca. 2.35 Gya, but it is debated whether this occurred more or less immediately as a proximal result of the evolution of oxygenic Cyanobacteria or whether they originated several hundred million to more than one billion years earlier in Earth history. The latter hypothesis involves a prolonged period during which oxygen production rates were insufficient to oxidize the atmosphere, potentially due to redox buffering by reduced species such as higher concentrations of ferrous iron in seawater. To examine the characteristic timescales for environmental oxygenation following the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis, we applied a simple mathematical approach that captures many of the salient features of the major biogeochemical fluxes and reservoirs present in Archean and early Paleoproterozoic surface environments. Calculations illustrate that oxygenation would have overwhelmed redox buffers within ~100 kyr following the emergence of oxygenic photosynthesis, a geologically short amount of time unless rates of primary production were far lower than commonly expected. Fundamentally, this result arises because of the multiscale nature of the carbon and oxygen cycles: rates of gross primary production are orders of magnitude too fast for oxygen to be masked by Earth's geological buffers, and can only be effectively matched by respiration at non-negligible O2 concentrations. These results suggest that oxygenic photosynthesis arose shortly before the rise of oxygen, not hundreds of millions of years before it.
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