The Rise of Complexity: Do the Pavilion Lake Microbialites Suggest a Way to Build a Macroorganism?

Details The Rise of Complexity: Do the Pavilion Lake Microbialites Suggest a Way to Build a Macroorganism? The Rise of Complexity: Do the Pavilion Lake Microbialites Suggest a Way to Build a Macroorganism?

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufm.b13a1053s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #B13A-1053

Biology

0406 Astrobiology And Extraterrestrial Materials, 0439 Ecosystems, Structure And Dynamics (4815), 0444 Evolutionary Geobiology, 1813 Eco-Hydrology, 5200 Planetary Sciences: Astrobiology

Scientific paper

The distinctive assemblage of freshwater calcite microbialites discovered at Pavilion Lake, BC, has been associated with organisms such as Epiphyton and Girvanella, fossils from just before the Cambrian explosion about 550 million years ago (Laval et al., 2000). The presence of the microbialite structures in a dimictic mid-latitude lake and their establishment after the last ice age about 10,000 years ago is puzzling. Their distinctive morphologies include cone-shaped seepage structures 2 m or more in height with hollow internal conduits that open at the top of the cones, and dense artichoke-like structures with calcite "leaves" greater than 1 m in height. These structures are astounding as they imply functional properties. In principle, this is not unlike the interaction of individual cells in a macroorganism, in which many different types of specialized cells interact with each other to the benefit of the whole organism (e.g. interaction of blood, integument, and organ cells within animals). Certainly, the complex interaction of these microbial cells is not equivalent to the collaboration of cells within an individual multicellular organism, where each cell has the same genetic information but differential gene expression provides well-defined cellular specializations. However, the microbialites raise the question of how much complexity and structure can be achieved by a high degree of communication within a multitude of microbial cells. Our findings indicate a complex and interacting microbial consortium associated with the structures at Pavilion Lake, and revealed biomarkers for proteobacteria, sulphur reducing bacteria, and firmicutes (possibly photosynthetic heliobacteria), among others. Types of genetic exchange among these microbial cells may include lateral gene transfer via conjugation, transformation, and transduction, or other mechanisms. This finding may have significant implications for the evolution of life on Earth and possible life on other planets. References: Laval, B., Cady, S.L., Pollack, J.C., McKay, C.P., Bird, J.S., Grotzinger, J.P., Ford, D.C., and Bohm, H.R. (2000) Modern freshwater microbialite analogues for ancient dendritic reef structures. Nature 407, 626-629.

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