• 1.75 billion year old thylakoid membrane structures

    From RonO@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jan 7 10:11:25 2024
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/01/240105145059.htm

    1.75 billion year old cyanobacteria fossils have been identified with
    thylakoid membranes. These are structures in the bacteria where aerobic photosynthesis occurs. The anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria are
    supposed to have evolved first, and do not seem to have thylakoid
    structures. It just means that cyanobacteria evolved by at least 1.75
    billion years ago. The assumption is that aerobic photosynthesis
    evolved around 2.4 billion years ago when the oxygenation of the earth
    began. This likely means that they still haven't found the oldest
    thylakoid membranes, but we likely do not know exactly when they did
    evolve. I guess they could have evolved after aerobic photosynthesis
    evolved. They are the stacked structures that you see in the biology
    textbooks found in eukariotic chloroplasts (endosymbiotic cyanobacteria).

    Ron Okimoto

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