2025/04/04 by Adrián Davín, Ben J. Woodcroft, Rochelle M. Soo +17 · 1 voice · 5 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies #Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology #Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils
paper · doi:10.1126/science.adp1853
openalex publication_date 2025/04/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
Microbial life has dominated Earth's history but left a sparse fossil record, greatly hindering our understanding of evolution in deep time. However, bacterial metabolism has left signatures in the geochemical record, most conspicuously the Great Oxidation Event (GOE). We combine machine learning and phylogenetic reconciliation to infer ancestral bacterial transitions to aerobic lifestyles, linking them to the GOE to calibrate the bacterial time tree. Extant bacterial phyla trace their diversity to the Archaean and Proterozoic, and bacterial families prior to the Phanerozoic. We infer that most bacterial phyla were ancestrally anaerobic and adopted aerobic lifestyles after the GOE. However, in the cyanobacterial ancestor, aerobic metabolism likely predated the GOE, which may have facilitated the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis.