International research teams such as the National Science Museum and Fukui University of Technology have evolved so that common ancestors such as animals and plants (common ancestors of eukaryotes) can safely eat chlorophyll used in photosynthesis that supports the earth's ecosystem. It was revealed that it was a living creature.The research team also includes the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, the National Institute for Environmental Studies, and Ritsumeikan University.

 Chlorophyll (chlorophyll) is a pigment that is indispensable for photosynthesis, and it is also a phototoxic substance that generates active oxygen when it is "eaten" by other organisms and causes fatal damage to the side that eats it.On the eating side, a mechanism to detoxify chlorophyll and counter phototoxicity is indispensable.

 Most algae are photosynthetic organisms that have chlorophyll, but this time, for eukaryotes that eat this algae (organisms that have cell nuclei in cells), chlorophyll taken into the cells is made into a safe substance called "CPE" that does not generate active oxygen. I found out that there is a mechanism to convert.

 Furthermore, it was revealed that although there are a great variety of eukaryotes on the earth today, the mechanism for "detoxifying" chlorophyll into CPE is common to almost all strains. ..This is at the stage of ancestral eukaryotes (existing in the Proterozoic era 10 to 18 billion years ago), which is the origin of the present diversity, and "a mechanism for safely eating algae" has already been established. It's proof.

 About XNUMX million years ago, when the Earth's atmosphere and oceans were filled with oxygen, chlorophyll-bearing "poisonous" algae flourished.Then, eukaryotes (common ancestors of existing eukaryotes including human beings) that had lived finely by eating algae emerged in place of rivals who could not detoxify chlorophyll.It is said that the descendants of eukaryotes that could eat algae in this oxygen environment diversified and prospered as they are today.

Paper information:[The ISME Journal] Taming chlorophylls by early eukaryotes underpinned algal interactions and the diversification of the eukaryotes on the oxygenated Earth

Ritsumeikan University
Fukui Institute of Technology

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