Microbial Innovation after the GOE

In the years following the GOE, the newfound wealth of electron acceptors (including but not limited to oxygen) provided new opportunities for high-energy metabolisms to emerge and spread. In this presentation, we use relaxed molecular clock analyses to test various "origin" hypotheses in the histories of phototrophy and sulfur metabolism. Specific questions we address are: 1) When did the major phototrophic lineages arise? (2) What are the relative ages of sulfur and sulfate reduction? (3) What was the timing and mechanism by which sulfate reduction became ecologically important? and (4) How might the histories of green sulfur bacteria and the ocean be connected?