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- Some 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere underwent a rapid increase in oxygen levels known as the Great Oxidation Event (GOE).
- A new study analyzes thermophilic microbe communities in two springs in Yellowstone National Park that represent snapshots of the Earth before and after the GOE.
- This research shows how increased oxygenation supported more diversity and how organisms in more anoxic conditions scraped by in a pre-GOE environment.
Attracting nearly five million visitors every year, Yellowstone National Park is one of the world’s most wondrous collections of geysers, hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles—all powered by a large underground magma chamber. Although the Old Faithful geyser is often the star of the show (and, potentially, the cause of our future destruction), many other geologic formations and hot springs within the famous park contain a host of information vital for scientists trying to understand how ancient life evolved on Earth.
Two such hot springs—known as the Conch and Octopus springs and located in the lower Geyser Basin—are of particular interest to scientists at Montana State University (MSU). That’s because these two are geochemically similar, save for one pretty big exception—oxygen. Conch Spring is highly sulfuric with no detectable oxygen, whereas Octopus Spring contains 20 micromolar of dissolved oxygen. This geochemical distinction made the two springs a perfect laboratory for understanding how microbial life evolved on an ancient Earth.
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The research team behind a study published last month in the journal Nature Communications focused on thermophiles—microbes that thrive in high temperature environments—because these bacteria likely played a role in the development of life on Earth as the planet underwent the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) some 2.4 billion years ago. During the GOE, oxygen levels in Earth’s atmosphere increase from essentially zero to between one and 10 percent of modern oxygen levels over the course of 200 million years.
These two springs in Yellowstone essentially represent life on each side of the GOE, and the study discovered that the oxygenated spring showed signs of greater diversity among oxygen-hungry microbes (and life in general) compared to the anoxic spring.
“It would be very difficult to reproduce this kind of an experiment in the laboratory; imagine trying to create hot-water streams with just the right amounts of oxygen and sulfide,” Bill Innskeep, lead author of the study from MSU, said in a press statement. “And that’s what’s so nice about studying these environments. We can make these observations in the exact geochemical conditions that these organisms need to thrive.”
The study reports that both the Conch and Octopus springs contained hyperthermophiles in the Aquificota (Thermocrinis), Pyropristinus (Caldipriscus), and Thermoproteota (Pyrobaculum) phylums, but found that the higher oxygen environment in Conch Spring sported a greater diversity of these ancient aerobic heterotrophs. These organisms live in gelatinous, somewhat snotty streamers, and the study focused on the microbes’ respiratory genes. They found that, while life was more diverse in Octopus Spring, genes that were adapted to low-oxygen in Conch Spring were more active, or “highly expressed.”
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This gives a convincing snapshot of how microbes prior to GOE could’ve scraped by with what little oxygen was present to produce future offspring that eventually kickstarted the rise in Earth’s oxygen levels.
“When oxygen started to increase in the environment, these thermophiles were likely important in the origin of microbial life,” Inskeep said in a press statement. “There was an evolution of organisms that utilized oxygen. Octopus has more oxygen and sure enough, there’s more aerobic organisms there. These environments have different casts of characters.”
So, if you ever go on that National Park pilgrimage to see Old Faithful in action, give a passing appreciation to the hard-working microbes that helped create the atmosphere that fills your lungs every day.
Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.
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