#13 Super Mountains Control Life on Earth, The Treasure in Tree Rings and Primate Protein Evolution...
The importance of tree rings and carbon, How supermountain ranges are responsible for life as we know it and how primate proteins are adapting to fight microbes...
🪙Tree Ring Treasure…
Utilising untapped tree ring data to calculate carbon sequestration…
In the battle against climate change, knowing the amount of carbon that forests sequester from the atmosphere is essential. Leaders and governments across the world are relying on forests to pull a good chunk of anthropogenically produced carbon back down to earth. However, forests ability to sequester carbon isn’t as straightforward as it may appear on paper. In new research, an alternative strategy to counter the uncertainty of calculating carbon that forests can sequester, using tree ring data from forest plots has been suggested.
Our oceans, soils and forests are termed “carbon sinks”, meaning that they sequester more carbon than they release. Sinks are globally relied upon to help achieve the goal of net-zero emissions. Due to nature being so complex and delicate, the unpredictability of these ecological systems can cause issues in calculating levels of carbon on any scale.
Previously, the global total for carbon pulled from the atmosphere by carbon sinks was estimated through the process of figuring out the difference between human produced emissions, ocean carbon levels and the level of atmospheric concentrations of CO2. However, supplementing the indirect calculation with data from existing tree ring collections, could provide an “on the ground” direct record of the carbon gained by individual trees and so forests. From there researchers could then scale up to estimate forest wide and continent-wide carbon savings. Tree ring samples combined with associated forest data, could be collected nationally meaning they can help in the answering of questions related to carbon and climate systems.
DeRose, Department of Wildland Resources said that “We need to get organized, with a more cohesive, forward-looking approach, nationally, continentally, and globally."
The authors make the case for sampling tree rings in the forest inventories across North America with the aim of bringing together key data to better understand how forests are changing, and how much carbon the can hold as the world continues to fight global climate change.
🧫Primate Protein Evolution…
How Primate Proteins Are Evolving to Guard From Pathogens…
Cell surface proteins are defined as proteins that are embedded within, or span the layer of cell membranes of more complex organisms. These proteins are key to the way in which a cell interacts with the environment around it, including other cells. Proteins located on the surface of cells act as sentries, resultantly microbes aiming to invade, have evolved and developed tricks to evade these front line defences. In typical, cyclic fashion, the host cell’s proteins evolve ways to make it harder for the microbes to get through…
In a new study, the lab of UO biologist Matt Barber focused on a family of proteins that are found on the surface of epithelial cells. Epithelial cells are cells that line the surfaces of your body. They are found on tissues and organs such as skin, blood vessels, urinary tract and other organs… As a result they line many of the surfaces important for microbial interactions such as the mouth, nose, digestive tract and reproductive tract. Barber and the team found how these proteins have evolved into strikingly distinct versions, that can block different kinds of bacteria even between closely related primates. The team went on to say that “One of the coolest things is just how rapidly these proteins can change”.
The group of proteins - CEACAMs, are especially interesting due to the fact that their primary job is not immune defence. Some of the functions of this group include helping cells to stick together to form more useful biological material, as well as supporting cell to cell communication. Due to their location within organisms, they are commonly a first point of microbial contact and so bacteria target CEACAM proteins as a way to infect cells and colonize surfaces in the body.
Barber said that "One of the broad goals in my lab is understanding how animals have evolved to defend themselves against pathogens, we've thought a lot about how the dedicated immune system responds to pathogens, but the first step is making contact with a cell". Importantly if CEACAM proteins change too much to skirt microbes, it could disrupt their other crucial non-immune related functions. The team surveyed these proteins across primates, enabling them to compare the genetic sequences of human CEACAM proteins with those of the same proteins found in a variety of primates.
The team found surprising levels of variability in CEACAM proteins’ genetic sequences, even in apes that were closely related. This therefore suggests that the proteins are under pressure to evolve differently in response to different microbes that may be encountered in varying habitats. Furthermore, a more detailed look revealed a form of “copy and paste” evolution - a way in which proteins swap genetic components and mix up their sequences. This allows proteins to make big evolutionary changes.
Researchers were also able to identify variants of human CEACAM proteins that had mutations that made them resistant to bacteria that cause gonorrhoea further suggesting that this gene swapping is continually shaping diversity in human populations.
Barber’s team plan to go on to investigate the effects of the mutations and how the changes could affect the proteins other roles in the body.
⛰️Supermountains Controlled Life On Earth?
How Supermountains Control The Evolution of Life on Earth…
Physical barriers are often the cause of speciation, and can have huge impacts on species, populations and ecosystems for various reasons. Giant mountain ranges, believed to be as high as the Himalayas but stretching to near 8,000 kilometres across entire supercontinents played a crucial role in early evolution.
Researchers from the Australian National University tracked the formation of supermountain ranges throughout Earths history through the use of zircon traces. This is a combination of mineral and rare earth element, that is found only in the roots of high mountains due to the fact they form under intense pressure. As a result, the study found that the largest of these supermountains formed only twice in evolutionary history. The first being between 2,000 and 1,800 million years ago with the seconds between 650 and 500 million years ago. These are both linked to the timing of supercontinent formation.
The study’s lead author Ziyi Zhu said that there are links between these two instances of supermountains and two evolutionary important moments in Earth’s history. She went on to say that "There's nothing like these two supermountains today. It's not just their height—if you can imagine the 2,400 km long Himalayas repeated three or four times you get an idea of the scale,".
The first example of supermountain, named the Nuna supermountain, coincides with the believed time period of the first appearance of eukaryotes. These organisms went on to give rise to life as we know it.
The second, the Transgondwanan supermountian, coincided with the appearance of the first truly large animals 575 million years ago, as well as the Cambrian explosion 45 million years later. This is the point in which most animals groups appeared in the fossil record.
"What's stunning is the entire record of mountain building through time is so clear. It shows these two huge spikes: one is linked to the emergence of animals and the other to the emergence of complex big cells." - Co-author Professor Jochen Brocks.
But… Why? The mountains eroding provided essential nutrients like phosphorous and iron to the oceans. This led to the “supercharging” of biological cycles and the driving of evolution towards greater complexity. In addition, the supermountains may have also boosted oxygen levels in the atmosphere, essential as we know for complex life to breath. The donation of nutrients is what allows us to conclude causality as well as correlation. “The early Earth's atmosphere contained almost no oxygen. Atmospheric oxygen levels are thought to have increased in a series of steps, two of which coincide with the supermountains," Ms Zhu said. The increase in atmospheric oxygen, associated with the erosion of supermountain number 2, the Transgondwanan Supermountain is the largest in Earth’s history and the key prerequisite for the appearance of animals.
The Boring Billion, the time period in which their was little evolutionary advance is the period between these two supermountain ranges. This slowing in evolution is attributed to the absence of supermountains and the reduced nutrient supply to the ocean. This study acts as a key marker, allowing us to better understand early evolution and complex life.
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🔗Reference List
🪙Tree Ring Treasure…
S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University. "Treasure in tree rings: Using untapped tree ring data to calculate carbon sequestration." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 3 February 2022. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220203123002.htm>.
Margaret E K Evans, R Justin DeRose, Stefan Klesse, Martin P Girardin, Kelly A Heilman, M Ross Alexander, André Arsenault, Flurin Babst, Mathieu Bouchard, Sean M P Cahoon, Elizabeth M Campbell, Michael Dietze, Louis Duchesne, David C Frank, Courtney L Giebink, Armando Gómez-Guerrero, Genaro Gutiérrez García, Edward H Hogg, Juha Metsaranta, Clémentine Ols, Shelly A Rayback, Anya Reid, Martin Ricker, Paul G Schaberg, John D Shaw, Patrick F Sullivan, Sergio Armando Villela GaytÁn. Adding Tree Rings to North America's National Forest Inventories: An Essential Tool to Guide Drawdown of Atmospheric CO2. BioScience, 2021; DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biab119
🧫Primate Protein Evolution…
Laurel Hamers, University of Oregon. (2022) - PHYSORG Accessed from: https://phys.org/news/2022-02-primate-proteins-evolve-pathogens.html
EmilyClare P Baker, Ryan Sayegh et al. (2022) Evolution of host-microbe cell adherence by receptor domain shuffling. eLife 2022; DOI: 10.7554/eLife.73330
⛰️Supermountains Controlled Life On Earth?
Australian National University (2022) - PHYSORG Accessed from: https://phys.org/news/2022-02-supermountains-evolution-life-earth.html
Ziyi Zhu et al, The temporal distribution of Earth's supermountains and their potential link to the rise of atmospheric oxygen and biological evolution, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2022.117391