Produced by: Manoj Kumar
Did aerobic metabolism exist before photosynthesis? A newly discovered molecule suggests bacteria could use oxygen before cyanobacteria made it abundant. Life’s oxygen story just got more complex.
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Scientists found a molecule in bacteria that resembles plant photosynthesis systems. This 2-billion-year-old biochemical relic might be the missing link between breathing oxygen and making it.
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A “missing link” molecule suggests some bacteria breathed oxygen before cyanobacteria produced it. Could aerobic metabolism have evolved before the Great Oxidation Event?
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Did oxygen breathers exist before oxygen makers? A rare bacterial molecule challenges long-held ideas about Earth’s earliest life, blurring the line between cause and effect.
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A molecule hiding in modern bacteria may be a living fossil from 2 billion years ago. Its discovery reshapes our understanding of how life adapted to Earth’s changing atmosphere.
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Cyanobacteria flooded Earth with oxygen 2.4 billion years ago, but new research hints that microbes may have used oxygen before it was abundant. Could life’s oxygen timeline be wrong?
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A molecule found in oxygen-breathing bacteria suggests that both photosynthesis and aerobic metabolism evolved together. Did nature develop both at once, solving evolution’s classic puzzle?
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Oxygen is deadly without proper biochemical defenses. The discovery of a primitive oxygen-processing molecule suggests life adapted before Earth’s air became oxygen-rich.
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A newly identified molecule bridges the gap between plant photosynthesis and bacterial respiration. Did nature’s oxygen-processing machinery evolve before or after the planet’s oxygen boom?
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