Single-celled oceans are nearly identical to their early Earth ancestors

The authors of the study studied the microbes of cyanobacteria. These single-celled photosynthetic organisms are also

Today, it can be found in almost any large body of water.But more than 2 billion years ago, they played an important role in Earth's history: During a period known as the "Great Oxygenation Event," ancient cyanobacteria produced a sudden and abrupt release of oxygen.

Today, scientists still don't know what these microbes looked like, where they lived, and what caused the release. 

The authors of the study decided to investigate natural and genetically engineered cyanobacteria.These ancient microbes may have floated freely in the open ocean and were similar to a modern life form called beta-cyanobacteria.

This research gave us a unique opportunity to form and test hypotheses about what the ancient Earth might have looked like and what these ancient organisms might have been.

Jeffrey Cameron, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry.

To find out how similar these bacteria are, the researchers cultured vessels filled with bright green cyanobacteria under conditions similar to those on Earth 2 billion years ago.

As a result, the team announced that it looks likestumbled upon a living fossil that was hidden in plain sight. And, according to them, it is clear that the cyanobacteria that lived around the time of the Great Oxygenation Event did indeed have a structure similar to the carboxisome. This structure could help cells protect themselves from the increasing concentration of oxygen in the air.

Now scientists are going to conduct experiments in order to understand what life in the ocean was like 2 billion years ago.

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