Prebiotic era

Folsome s idea can be seen as an argument for setting the origin of photosynthesis at a much earlier stage, in fact, in the prebiotic era. The purpose of this intervention is to present some evidence that may support such a prebiotic origin of photosynthesis. 

Fig. 2. An evolution diagram illustrating a suggestion of common ancestry of some present-day organisms. The essential features of present-day photosynthesis may have originated in the prebiotic era and is preserved in its most primitive form in (at least some) present-day phototrophs. The heterotrophs may have developed parallel with the aerobic nonphotosynthetic bacteria, some l to 1.5 x 109 years after the emergence of the cyanobacteria. The eukaryotic photosynthetic organisms developed much later, perhaps some 1.5 to 0.5 x 109 years ago. The archaebacteria are primitive organisms that seem to have no evolutionary relation with the present prokaryotes.21 Little is known about their energy metabolism. Tentatively, they are considered as a very early form of cellular life.

Lahav, N. White, D. Chang, S. Peptide formation in the prebiotic era Thermal condensation of glycine in fluctuating clay enviromnents. Science 1978,201, 67-69. 

A critical property of minimum protocells in the prebiotic environment would be their ability to sequester other molecules, including macromolecules. [142] In 1982, Deamer and Barchfeld [143] subjected phospholipid vesides to dehydration-rehydration cycles in the presence of either monomeric 6-carboxyfluorescein molecules or polymeric salmon sperm DNA molecules as extraneous solutes. The experiment modeled a prebiotic tidal pool containing dilute dispersions of phospholipids in the presence of external solutes, with the dehydration-rehydration cydes representing episodic dry and wet eras. They found that the vesides formed after rehydration... 

Since the terrestrial rock record has hitherto failed to furnish unequivocal evidence of prebiotic organic chemistry, early chemical evolution was almost certainly confined to the Hadean era bracketed by the time of Earth s formation ( 4.5 billion years ago) and the onset of the sedimentary record about 3.8 billion years ago (Figure 29). 

Preidis, G.A., and Versalovic, J. (2009). Targeting the human microbiome with antibiotics, probiotics, and prebiotics gastroenterology enters the metagenomics era. Gastroenterology 136, 2015—2031. 

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