The Microbial Engines That Drive Earth's Biogeochemical Cycles Export

@article{citeulike:2826350, abstract = {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. 10.1126/science.1153213}, author = {Falkowski, Paul G. and Fenchel, Tom and Delong, Edward F.}, citeulike-article-id = {2826350}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1153213}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/320/5879/1034}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18497287}, citeulike-linkout-3 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=18497287}, day = {23}, doi = {10.1126/science.1153213}, journal = {Science}, keywords = {biogeochemistry, biology, evolution, genetic, genome, microbiology}, month = {May}, number = {5879}, pages = {1034--1039}, posted-at = {2008-11-09 18:04:56}, priority = {2}, title = {The Microbial Engines That Drive Earth's Biogeochemical Cycles}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1153213}, volume = {320}, year = {2008} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2826350 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2826350 N2 - 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. 10.1126/science.1153213 IS - 5879 JF - Science EP - 1039 TI - The Microbial Engines That Drive Earth's Biogeochemical Cycles VL - 320 SP - 1034 KW - biogeochemistry KW - biology KW - evolution KW - genetic KW - genome KW - microbiology AU - Falkowski, Paul AU - Fenchel, Tom AU - Delong, Edward PY - 2008/05/23/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1153213 ER -