Solarlife on earth started 3bn years ago

Life on Earth 'surged three billion years ago as early animals learned how to use energy from the sun'

source: dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech

Life on Earth suddenly exploded into being

around three billion years ago, according to

a new study

Scientists have studied ancient genes to paint a picture of our planet’s earliest inhabitants and believe the first life developed when microbes learned to use oxygen and energy from the sun to live.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) studied 1,000 key genes that exist today and worked out how they evolved from the very distant past.

Oxygen

Oxygen did not exist in the Earth's atmosphere until about 2.5 billion years ago when it began to accumulate, likely killing off vast numbers of anerobic life forms in the Great Oxidation Event

Closer inspection, however, showed that oxygen-utilising genes didn't appear until the tail end of the Archean Expansion 2.8 billion years ago, which is more consistent with the date geochemists assign to the Great Oxidation Event.

Alm and David believe they've detected the birth of modern electron transport, the biochemical process responsible for shuttling electrons within cellular membranes.

Electron transport is used to breathe oxygen and by plants and some microbes during photosynthesis when they harvest energy directly from the sun. A form of photosynthesis called oxygenic photosynthesis is believed to be responsible for generating the oxygen associated with the Great Oxidation Event, and is responsible for the oxygen we breathe today.