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Unravelling ancient microbial history with community proteogenomics and lipid geochemistry

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 7, pages 601–609 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Our window into the Earth's ancient microbial past is narrow and obscured by missing data. However, we can glean information about ancient microbial ecosystems using fossil lipids (biomarkers) that are extracted from billion-year-old sedimentary rocks. In this Opinion article, we describe how environmental genomics and related methodologies will give molecular fossil research a boost, by increasing our knowledge about how evolutionary innovations in microorganisms have changed the surface of planet Earth.

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Figure 1: Timeline (in billions of years (Gyr) before the present) of major environmental and biological events in the Earth's history.
Figure 2: The diagenetic transformation of okenone, a carotenoid found exclusively in planktonic purple sulphur bacteria (Chromatiaceae), to the molecular fossil okenane.
Figure 3: Community genomics and proteomics for prediction of lipid products.

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Acknowledgements

We thank W. Fischer and B. Rasmussen for advice on figure 1.

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  1. Jochen J. Brocks is at the Research School of Earth Sciences, and Centre for Macroevolution and Macroecology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.,

    Jochen J. Brocks

  2. Jillian Banfield is at the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-4767, USA.,

    Jillian Banfield

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Brocks, J., Banfield, J. Unravelling ancient microbial history with community proteogenomics and lipid geochemistry. Nat Rev Microbiol 7, 601–609 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2167

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