Early Archean origin of Photosystem II
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Cardona Londono, Tanai
Sanchez-Baracaldo, Patricia
Rutherford, Alfred William
Larkum, Anthony
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Photosystem II is a photochemical reaction center that catalyzes the light‐driven oxidation of water to molecular oxygen. Water oxidation is the distinctive photochemical reaction that permitted the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis and the eventual rise of eukaryotes. At what point during the history of life an ancestral photosystem evolved the capacity to oxidize water still remains unknown. Here, we study the evolution of the core reaction center proteins of Photosystem II using sequence and structural comparisons in combination with Bayesian relaxed molecular clocks. Our results indicate that a homodimeric photosystem with sufficient oxidizing power to split water had already appeared in the early Archean about a billion years before the most recent common ancestor of all described Cyanobacteria capable of oxygenic photosynthesis, and well before the diversification of some of the known groups of anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria. Based on a structural and functional rationale, we hypothesize that this early Archean photosystem was capable of water oxidation to oxygen and had already evolved protection mechanisms against the formation of reactive oxygen species. This would place primordial forms of oxygenic photosynthesis at a very early stage in the evolutionary history of life.
Date Issued
2019-03
Date Acceptance
2018-10-11
Citation
Geobiology, 2019, 17 (2), pp.127-150
ISSN
1472-4669
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
127
End Page
150
Journal / Book Title
Geobiology
Volume
17
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Authors. Geobiology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Sponsor
Leverhulme Trust
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
Grant Number
BB/K002627/1
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Physical Sciences
Biology
Environmental Sciences
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Life Sciences & Biomedicine - Other Topics
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
Geology
Archean
Chloroflexi
Cyanobacteria
evolution
photosystem
Proteobacteria
reaction center
water oxidation
PHOTOSYNTHETIC REACTION CENTERS
OXYGENIC PHOTOSYNTHESIS
BETA-CAROTENE
ELECTRON-TRANSFER
DIVERGENCE TIMES
RAPID EVOLUTION
PROTEIN
OXIDATION
CHLOROPHYLL
COMPLEX
Archean
Chloroflexi
Cyanobacteria
Proteobacteria
evolution
photosystem
reaction center
water oxidation
Bacterial Proteins
Bayes Theorem
Cyanobacteria
Evolution, Molecular
Photosynthesis
Photosystem II Protein Complex
Phylogeny
Cyanobacteria
Photosystem II Protein Complex
Bacterial Proteins
Bayes Theorem
Evolution, Molecular
Phylogeny
Photosynthesis
Geochemistry & Geophysics
0403 Geology
0602 Ecology
0402 Geochemistry
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2018-11-09