Oxygen is a vital and constant presence on Earth today. But that hasn’t always been the case. It wasn’t until around 2.3 billion years ago that oxygen became a permanent fixture in the atmosphere, during a pivotal period known as the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), which set the evolutionary course for oxygen-breathing life as we know it today. A new study by MIT researchers suggests some early forms of life may have evolved the ability to use oxygen hundreds of millions of years before the GOE. The findings may represent some of the earliest evidence of aerobic respiration on Earth.
In their study published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, MIT geobiologists traced the evolutionary origins of a key enzyme that enables organisms to use oxygen. The enzyme is found in the vast majority of aerobic, oxygen-breathing lifeforms today. The team discovered that this enzyme evolved during the Mesoarchean —a geological period that predates the Great Oxidation Event by hundreds of millions of years.
The team’s results may help to explain a longstanding puzzle in Earth’s history: Why did it take so long for oxygen to build up in the atmosphere?
