Light-capturing proteins illuminate Earth of billions of years ago. Scientists have reconstructed what life was like for some of Earth’s earliest organisms by using light-capturing proteins in living microbes. These endeavors could help us recognize signs of alien life on other planets, whose atmos
Artist’s rendering of the process by which microbes captured sunlight for energy with rhodopsin proteins. Credit: Sohail Wasif/UCRScientists have reconstructed what life was like for some of Earth’s earliest organisms by using light-capturing proteins in living microbes.
Using a type of artificial intelligence called machine learning, the team of scientists analyzed rhodopsin protein sequences from all over the world and tracked how they evolved over time. Then, they created a type of family tree that allowed them to reconstruct rhodopsins from 2.5 to 4 billion years ago, and the conditions that they likely faced.Molecular Biology and Evolution“Life as we know it is as much an expression of the conditions on our planet as it is of life itself.
Since ancient Earth did not yet have the benefit of an ozone layer, the research team theorizes that billions-of-years-old microbes lived many meters down in the water column to shield themselves from intense UVB radiation at the surface. Rhodopsins today are able to absorb colors of light that chlorophyll pigments in plants cannot. Though they represent completely unrelated and independent light capture mechanisms, they absorb complementary areas of the spectrum.
“We engineer the ancient DNA inside modern genomes and reprogram the bugs to behave how we believe they did millions of years ago. Rhodopsin is a great candidate for laboratory time-travel studies,” Kacar said.
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