Granick revisited: Synthesizing evolutionary and ecological evidence for the late origin of bacteriochlorophyll via ghost lineages and horizontal gene transfer.

ABSTRACT: Photosynthesis-both oxygenic and more ancient anoxygenic forms-has fueled the bulk of primary productivity on Earth since it first evolved more than 3.4 billion years ago. However, the early evolutionary history of photosynthesis has been challenging to interpret due to the sparse, scattered distribution of metabolic pathways associated with photosynthesis, long timescales of evolution, and poor sampling of the true environmental diversity of photosynthetic bacteria. Here, we reconsider longstanding hypotheses for the evolutionary history of phototrophy by leveraging recent advances in metagenomic sequencing and phylogenetics to analyze relationships among phototrophic organisms and components of their photosynthesis pathways, including reaction centers and individual proteins and complexe

SUBMITTER: Ward LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7842958 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature