ReviewCold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology2015
Early Microbial Evolution: The Age of Anaerobes.
Review in Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers.
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50 citing papers in PubMed, 129 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Fate of Horizontally Acquired Genes: Rapid Initial Turnover Followed by Long-Term Persistence.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Oxygen reductase origin followed the great oxidation event and terminated the Lomagundi excursion.Biochimica et biophysica acta. Bioenergetics · 2026Article
- Cultivation of Methanonezhaarchaeia, the third class of methanogens within the phylum Thermoproteota.Science advances · 2025Article
- Article
- Thermodynamic dissipation constrains metabolic versatility of unicellular growth.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Bioenergetics evolution: the link between Earth's and Life's history.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- The Hidden Price of Plenty: Oxidative Stress and Calorie-Induced Cardiometabolic Dysfunction.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- A reassessment of the "hard-steps" model for the evolution of intelligent life.Science advances · 2025Review
- Microbial ecology of serpentinite-hosted ecosystems.The ISME journal · 2025Review
- Phylogenetic diversity and community structure ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Coevolution and cross-infection patterns between viruses and their host methanogens in paddy soils.ISME communications · 2025Article
- Evolution of Pyrrolysyl-tRNA Synthetase: From Methanogenesis to Genetic Code Expansion.Chemical reviews · 2024Review
- Protocellular Heme and Iron-Sulfur Clusters.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Review
- Methylotrophic methanogenesis in the Archaeoglobi revealed by cultivation of Ca. Methanoglobus hypatiae from a Yellowstone hot spring.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- Identification of a deep-branching thermophilic clade sheds light on early bacterial evolution.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Adaptive laboratory evolution of a thermophile toward a reduced growth temperature optimum.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Serpentinization as the source of energy, electrons, organics, catalysts, nutrients and pH gradients for the origin of LUCA and life.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Review
- Bacterial effluxome as a barrier against antimicrobial agents: structural biology aspects and drug targeting.Tissue barriers · 2022Review
- A Thermodynamic Model for Water Activity and Redox Potential in Evolution and Development.Journal of molecular evolution · 2022Article
- The late Archaean to early Proterozoic origin and evolution of anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea.mLife · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In this article, the term "early microbial evolution" refers to the phase of biological history from the emergence of life to the diversification of the first microbial lineages. In the modern era (since we knew about archaea), three debates have emerged on the subject that deserve discussion: (1) thermophilic origins versus mesophilic origins, (2) autotrophic origins versus heterotrophic origins, and (3) how do eukaryotes figure into early evolution. Here, we revisit those debates from the standpoint of newer data. We also consider the perhaps more pressing issue that molecular phylogenies need to recover anaerobic lineages at the base of prokaryotic trees, because O2 is a product of biological evolution; hence, the first microbes had to be anaerobes. If molecular phylogenies do not recover anaerobes basal, something is wrong. Among the anaerobes, hydrogen-dependent autotrophs--acetogens and methanogens--look like good candidates for the ancestral state of physiology in the bacteria and archaea, respectively. New trees tend to indicate that eukaryote cytosolic ribosomes branch within their archaeal homologs, not as sisters to them and, furthermore tend to root archaea within the methanogens. These are major changes in the tree of life, and open up new avenues of thought. Geochemical methane synthesis occurs as a spontaneous, abiotic exergonic reaction at hydrothermal vents. The overall similarity between that reaction and biological methanogenesis fits well with the concept of a methanogenic root for archaea and an autotrophic origin of microbial physiology.
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