In algae and bacteria

Algae come in multiple forms from multicellular organisms like kelp, to microscopic, single-celled organisms. Although they are not as complex as land plants, photosynthesis takes place biochemically the same way. Very much like plants, algae have chloroplasts and chlorophyll, but various accessory pigments are present in some algae such as phycocyanin, carotenes and xanthophylls in green algae and phycoerythrin in red algae (rhodophytes), resulting in a wide variety of colors. All algae produce oxygen, and many are autotrophic. However, some are heterotrophic, relying on materials produced by other organisms. For example, in coral reefs, there is a mutualistic relationship between zooxanthellae and the coral polyps.^[5]

Photosynthetic bacteria do not have chloroplasts (or any membrane-bound organelles). Instead, photosynthesis takes place directly within the cell. Cyanobacteria contain thylakoid membranes very similar to those in chloroplasts and are the only prokaryotes that perform oxygen-generating photosynthesis. In fact chloroplasts are now considered to have evolved from an endosymbiotic bacterium, which was also an ancestor of and later gave rise to cyanobacterium. The other photosynthetic bacteria have a variety of different pigments, called bacteriochlorophylls, and do not produce oxygen. Some bacteria, such as Chromatium, oxidize hydrogen sulfide instead of water for photosynthesis, producing sulfur as waste.

Evolution

Plant cells with visible chloroplasts.

The ability to convert light energy to chemical energy confers a significant evolutionary advantage to living organisms. Early photosynthetic systems, such as those from green and purple sulfur and green and purple non-sulfur bacteria, are thought to have been anoxygenic, using various molecules as electron donors. Green and purple sulfur bacteria are thought to have used hydrogen and sulfur as an electron donor. Green nonsulfur bacteria used various amino and other organic acids. Purple nonsulfur bacteria used a variety of non-specific organic molecules. The use of these molecules is consistent with the geological evidence that the atmosphere was highly reduced at that time.^{[citation needed]}

Fossils of what are thought to be filamentous photosynthetic organisms have been dated at 3.4 billion years old.^[6]

Oxygen in the atmosphere exists due to the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis, sometimes referred to as the oxygen catastrophe. Geological evidence suggests that oxygenic photosynthesis, such as that in cyanobacteria, became important during the Paleoproterozoic era around 2 billion years ago. Modern photosynthesis in plants and most photosynthetic prokaryotes is oxygenic. Oxygenic photosynthesis uses water as an electron donor which is oxidized into molecular oxygen by the absorption of a photon by the photosynthetic reaction centre.

Origin of chloroplasts

In plants the process of photosynthesis occurs in organelles called chloroplasts. Chloroplasts have many similarities with photosynthetic bacteria including a circular chromosome, prokaryotic-type ribosomes, and similar proteins in the photosynthetic reaction centre.

The endosymbiotic theory suggests that photosynthetic bacteria were acquired (by endocytosis or gene fusion) by early eukaryotic cells to form the first plant cells. In other words, chloroplasts may simply be primitive photosynthetic bacteria adapted to life inside plant cells, while plants themselves have not actually evolved photosynthetic processes on their own. Another example of this can be found in complex animals, including humans, whose cells depend upon mitochondria as their energy source; mitochondria are thought to have evolved from endosymbiotic bacteria, related to modern Rickettsia bacteria. Both chloroplasts and mitochondria actually have their own DNA, separate from the nuclear DNA of their animal or plant host cells.

This contention is supported by the finding that the marine molluscs Elysia viridis and Elysia chlorotica seem to maintain a symbiotic relationship with chloroplasts from algae with similar RDA structures that they encounter. However, they do not transfer these chloroplasts to the next generations.

Cyanobacteria and the evolution of photosynthesis

The biochemical capacity to use water as the source for electrons in photosynthesis evolved once, in a common ancestor of extant cyanobacteria. The geological record indicates that this transforming event took place early in our planet's history, at least 2450-2320 million years ago (Ma), and possibly much earlier. Geobiological interpretation of Archean (>2500 Ma) sedimentary rocks remains a challenge; available evidence indicates that life existed 3500 Ma, but the question of when oxygenic photosynthesis evolved continues to engender debate and research. A clear paleontological window on cyanobacterial evolution opened about 2000 Ma, revealing an already diverse biota of blue-greens. Cyanobacteria remained principal primary producers throughout the Proterozoic Eon (2500-543 Ma), in part because the redox structure of the oceans favored photautotrophs capable of nitrogen fixation. Green algae joined blue-greens as major primary producers on continental shelves near the end of the Proterozoic, but only with the Mesozoic (251-65 Ma) radiations of dinoflagellates, coccolithophorids, and diatoms did primary production in marine shelf waters take modern form. Cyanobacteria remain critical to marine ecosystems as primary producers in oceanic gyres, as agents of biological nitrogen fixation, and, in modified form, as the plastids of marine algae.^[7]