Venter and other scientists are experimenting
with photosynthetic microbes such as algae and cyanobacteria (sometimes referred to as blue - green algae).
Not exact matches
Photosynthetic microbes filled the atmosphere
with oxygen billions of years ago but they renovated the planet without awareness.
On the other hand, many anaerobic
microbes including methanogens are easily poisoned by oxygen, and the recent discovery of banded sediments
with rusted iron on Akilia Island in West Greenland suggests that oxygen - producing,
photosynthetic microbes (e.g., cyanobacteria) living on the surface of wet areas to gather sunlight may have developed by the end of this geologic period (3.85 billion years ago) despite continuing bombardment from space.
As proposed by Andrew Goldsworthy in 1987, cyanobacteria and later chloroplast - related protists and plants developed after
microbes that used a purple pigment bacteriorhodopsin that absorbs green light dominated the oceans, and so the new
photosynthetic cyanobacteria were forced to use the left - over light
with chlorophyll that reflects green light, which was too complex to change even after purple - reflecting
photosynthetic lifeforms were no longer dominant (Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist, September 10, 2010 — more on the evolution of
photosynthetic life and plants on Earth).
Earth's much thicker layer of low - level ozone, however, has a much larger contribution from the build - up of molecular oxygen beginning some 2.4 billion years ago from
photosynthetic microbes excreting oxygen as a waste gas, which now along
with plant life is constantly replenishing Earth's two - atom as well as three - stom ozone oxygen molecules.
Even more crustal minerals were formed by plate tectonics
with the help of lubricating ocean water, atmospheric oxygen from the successful development of
photosynthetic microbes, and land - based lichens (of algae and fungi) and mosses which were followed by deep - rooted plants that hastened the erosion and weathering of surface rocks
with the help of biochemical action and the creation of soils as well as new clay minerals.