Methane, oxygen, photosynthesis, rubisco and the regulation of the air through time.

ABSTRACT: Rubisco I's specificity, which today may be almost perfectly tuned to the task of cultivating the global garden, controlled the balance of carbon gases and O(2) in the Precambrian ocean and hence, by equilibration, in the air. Control of CO(2) and O(2) by rubisco I, coupled with CH(4) from methanogens, has for the past 2.9 Ga directed the global greenhouse warming, which maintains liquid oceans and sustains microbial ecology.Both rubisco compensation controls and the danger of greenhouse runaway (e.g. glaciation) put limits on biological productivity. Rubisco may sustain the air in either of two permissible stable states: either an anoxic system with greenhouse warming supported by both high methane mixing ratios as well as carbon dioxide, or an oxygen-rich system in which CO(2) largely fu

SUBMITTER: Nisbet EG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2606774 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature