{"id":156874,"date":"2023-02-02T23:14:24","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T05:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/genetic-engineering-sheds-light-on-ancient-evolutionary-questions"},"modified":"2023-02-02T23:14:24","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T05:14:24","slug":"genetic-engineering-sheds-light-on-ancient-evolutionary-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/genetic-engineering-sheds-light-on-ancient-evolutionary-questions","title":{"rendered":"Genetic engineering sheds light on ancient evolutionary questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/genetic-engineering-sheds-light-on-ancient-evolutionary-questions3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cyanobacteria are single-celled organisms that derive energy from light, using photosynthesis to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2<\/sub>) and liquid water (H<sub>2<\/sub>O) into breathable oxygen and the carbon-based molecules like proteins that make up their cells. Cyanobacteria were the first organisms to perform photosynthesis in the history of Earth, and were responsible for flooding the early Earth with oxygen, thus significantly influencing how life evolved.<\/p>\n<p>Geological measurements suggest that the atmosphere of the early Earth\u2014over three billion years ago\u2014was likely rich in CO<sub>2<\/sub>, far higher than current levels caused by <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/anthropogenic+climate+change\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">anthropogenic climate change<\/a>, meaning that ancient <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/cyanobacteria\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cyanobacteria<\/a> had plenty to \u201ceat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But over Earth\u2019s multi-billion-year history, atmospheric CO<sub>2<\/sub> concentrations have decreased, and so to survive, these bacteria needed to evolve new strategies to extract CO<sub>2<\/sub>. Modern cyanobacteria thus look quite different from their ancient ancestors, and possess a complex, fragile set of structures called a CO<sub>2<\/sub>-concentrating mechanism (CCM) to compensate for lower concentrations of CO<sub>2<\/sub>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cyanobacteria are single-celled organisms that derive energy from light, using photosynthesis to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and liquid water (H2O) into breathable oxygen and the carbon-based molecules like proteins that make up their cells. Cyanobacteria were the first organisms to perform photosynthesis in the history of Earth, and were responsible for flooding the early [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,493,412,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-climatology","category-genetics","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}