The evolution of photosynthesis and chloroplasts
Year: 2009
Type: review
Abstract: This review focuses on what has been learned about the evolution of photosynthesis in the past five years, and omits evolution of CO2 assimilation. Oxygenic photosynthesis (using both photosystems I and II) has evolved from anoxygenic photosynthesis. The latter occurs in different variants, using either a type 1 photosystem resembling photosystem I, or a type 2 photosystem resembling photosystem II. Opinions differ as to how two types of photosystem came to be combined in the same organism, whether by gene transfer between bacteria, by fusion of bacteria, or as a result of gene duplication and evolution within one kind of bacterium. There are also different opinions about when oxygenic photosynthesis arose, in conjunction with the Great Oxygenation Event, 2.3 billion years before the present, or more than a billion years before that. Cyanobacteria were the first organisms to carry out oxygenic photosynthesis. Some of them gave rise to chloroplasts, while others continued to evolve as independent organisms, and the review outlines both lines of evolution. At the end we consider the evolution of photosynthesis in relation to the evolution of our planet.
Authors: Lars Olof Björn, Govindjee Govindjee
Institution: Lund University
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1731025320