The microbial engines that drive Earth's biogeochemical cycles

被引:2191
作者
Falkowski, Paul G. [1 ,2 ]
Fenchel, Tom [3 ]
Delong, Edward F. [4 ,5 ]
机构
[1] Rutgers State Univ, Environm Biophys & Mol Ecol Program, Inst Marine & Coastal Sci, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 USA
[2] Rutgers State Univ, Dept Earth & Planetary Sci, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 USA
[3] Univ Copenhagen, Marine Biol Lab, DK-3000 Helsingor, Denmark
[4] MIT, Dept Civil & Environm Engn, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
[5] MIT, Dept Biol Engn, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
关键词
D O I
10.1126/science.1153213
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
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.
引用
收藏
页码:1034 / 1039
页数:6
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