The Archean origin of oxygenic photosynthesis and extant cyanobacterial lineages

The record of the coevolution of oxygenic phototrophs and the environment is preserved in three forms: genomes of modern organisms, diverse geochemical signals of surface oxidation and diagnostic Proterozoic microfossils. When calibrated by fossils, genomic data form the basis of molecular clock ana...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Vol. 288; no. 1959; p. 20210675
Main Authors:	Fournier, G P, Moore, K R, Rangel, L T, Payette, J G, Momper, L, Bosak, T
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	England The Royal Society 29-09-2021
Subjects:	Biological Evolution Cyanobacteria - genetics Evolution Fossils Oxygen Photosynthesis Phylogeny Great Oxygenation Event Cryogenian molecular clock Archean horizontal gene transfer cyanobacteria
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Summary:	The record of the coevolution of oxygenic phototrophs and the environment is preserved in three forms: genomes of modern organisms, diverse geochemical signals of surface oxidation and diagnostic Proterozoic microfossils. When calibrated by fossils, genomic data form the basis of molecular clock analyses. However, different interpretations of the geochemical record, fossil calibrations and evolutionary models produce a wide range of age estimates that are often conflicting. Here, we show that multiple interpretations of the cyanobacterial fossil record are consistent with an Archean origin of crown-group Cyanobacteria. We further show that incorporating relative dating information from horizontal gene transfers greatly improves the precision of these age estimates, by both providing a novel empirical criterion for selecting evolutionary models, and increasing the stringency of sampling of posterior age estimates. Independent of any geochemical evidence or hypotheses, these results support oxygenic photosynthesis evolving at least several hundred million years before the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE), a rapid diversification of major cyanobacterial lineages around the time of the GOE, and a post-Cryogenian origin of extant marine picocyanobacterial diversity.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5621091.
ISSN:	0962-8452 1471-2954
DOI:	10.1098/rspb.2021.0675