Light-driven anaerobic microbial oxidation of manganese

Mirna Daye (), Vanja Klepac-Ceraj, Mihkel Pajusalu, Sophie Rowland, Anna Farrell-Sherman, Nicolas Beukes, Nobumichi Tamura, Gregory Fournier and Tanja Bosak ()
Additional contact information
Mirna Daye: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Vanja Klepac-Ceraj: Wellesley College
Mihkel Pajusalu: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sophie Rowland: Wellesley College
Anna Farrell-Sherman: Wellesley College
Nicolas Beukes: University of Johannesburg
Nobumichi Tamura: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Gregory Fournier: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tanja Bosak: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature, 2019, vol. 576, issue 7786, 311-314

Abstract: Abstract Oxygenic photosynthesis supplies organic carbon to the modern biosphere, but it is uncertain when this metabolism originated. It has previously been proposed1,2 that photosynthetic reaction centres capable of splitting water arose by about 3 billion years ago on the basis of the inferred presence of manganese oxides in Archaean sedimentary rocks. However, this assumes that manganese oxides can be produced only in the presence of molecular oxygen3, reactive oxygen species4,5 or by high-potential photosynthetic reaction centres6,7. Here we show that communities of anoxygenic photosynthetic microorganisms biomineralize manganese oxides in the absence of molecular oxygen and high-potential photosynthetic reaction centres. Microbial oxidation of Mn(ii) under strictly anaerobic conditions during the Archaean eon would have produced geochemical signals identical to those used to date the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis before the Great Oxidation Event1,2. This light-dependent process may also produce manganese oxides in the photic zones of modern anoxic water bodies and sediments.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1804-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:576:y:2019:i:7786:d:10.1038_s41586-019-1804-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1804-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().