The Microbial Engines That Drive Earth's Biogeochemical Cycles
Abstract
Virtually all nonequilibrium electron transfers on Earth are driven by a set of nanobiological machines composed largely of multimeric protein complexes associated with a small number of prosthetic groups. These machines evolved exclusively in microbes early in our planet's history yet, despite their antiquity, are highly conserved. Hence, although there is enormous genetic diversity in nature, there remains a relatively stable set of core genes coding for the major redox reactions essential for life and biogeochemical cycles. These genes created and coevolved with biogeochemical cycles and were passed from microbe to microbe primarily by horizontal gene transfer. A major challenge in the coming decades is to understand how these machines evolved, how they work, and the processes that control their activity on both molecular and planetary scales.
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The O2-rich ocean-atmosphere system of the modern Earth supports high levels of standing biomass, energy flow, and ecological complexity.
“The amount of metabolic energy available to a biosphere powered by O 2 is vast, such that the O 2 -rich ocean-atmosphere system of the modern Earth supports staggering levels of standing biomass (Bar-On et al. 2018), energy flow (Falkowski et al. 2008), and ecological complexity (Steele 1974).”
From The History of Ocean Oxygenation (2022) · cites this paper as Falkowski et al. 2008
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- Authors
- Falkowski, P. G., Fenchel, T., & Delong, E. F.
- Affiliations
- Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US)
- Corresponding author
- Falkowski, Paul G.
- Fenchel, Tom
- Delong, Edward F.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2008-05-23
- Volume
- 320
- Issue
- 5879
- Pages
- 1034-1039
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W1991310235
- Cited by
- 3,379
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 308 · 2025: 307 · 2024: 311 · 2023: 286 · 2022: 311 · 2021: 297 · 2020: 258 · 2019: 210 · 2018: 202 · 2017: 158 · 2016: 147 · 2015: 116 · 2014: 108 · 2013: 91 · 2012: 88
- FWCI
- 6.51
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Microbial Fuel Cells and Bioremediation
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Metalloenzymes and iron-sulfur proteins
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Microbial metabolism and enzyme function
- Keywords
- microbial electron transfer, multimeric proteins, prosthetic groups, redox reactions, biogeochemical cycles, horizontal gene transfer, core genes, microbial evolution, microbial coevolution
- MeSH terms
- Archaea, Atmosphere, Bacteria, Bacterial Proteins, Elements, Biological Evolution, Genes, Bacterial, Geology, Oxidation-Reduction, Photosynthesis, Thermodynamics, Genetic Variation, Ecosystem, Earth, Planet, Genes, Archaeal, Archaeal Proteins, Gene Transfer, Horizontal, Metabolic Networks and Pathways, Geological Phenomena
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