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Early Earth was no place to be. Hot, oxygen-free and subject to cataclysmic cosmic bombardments, our planet some 4.5 billion years ago was inhospitable to life as we know it. And yet from this early awkward stage, thanks to the metabolism of primitive single-celled organisms, Earth s atmosphere changed. Oxygen levels rose first in the shallow surface waters and atmosphere, and 2 billion years later in deeper waters.
This Great Oxidation Event, which began about 2.4 billion years ago, set the stage for a turning point in the history of life on Earth that is also among its most enduring mysteries: the evolution of complex cellular organisms, the eukaryotes. Unlike single-celled organisms such as bacteria and archaea, eukaryotes have a membrane-enclosed nucleus, the fundamental cell structure that would carry over into all plants, animals, protists and fungi on the planet.
Alyson Santoro and Susannah Porter receive support from the Moore and the Simons foundations to investigate the origins of the eukaryotic cell By Sonia.