Criteria: I | Oxygen
Breathe in;
take in
That with
no colour,
no shape
and form.
Found in
the air
we breathe.
Oxygen
Breathe out;
decompress,
let out
that which
feels too
heavy.
Too much
to take.
Too much
to hold.
Unnecessary
to keep.
Breathe in;
and repeat.
We always breathe. We take a moment to take in a deep breath — What started as an evolution to breathe in a transparent gas, to what became a necessity; is oxygen.
What’s up with this transparent gas? It’s a big deal. Oxygen is needed for respiration, cellular respiration, and converting food into energy. Oxygen = The possibility to grow. We won’t be looking into these particular facets of oxygen here, but how the presence of the gas in our atmosphere came to be. And how it offers us a light blanket to rely on. This post is about the colourless, odourless, reactive, diatomic gas, and chemical element, oxygen.
Dear Patient Reader,
Making up about to 21%[1] of the Earth’s atmosphere, oxygen is a life support system. Oxygen is found in Earth’s atmosphere; a layer of gases that give Earth its translucent appeal. The atmosphere. A limitless sky, a heavenly abode. But also a fragile blue line, so insignificant in an incomprehensibly large cosmos.
A little gassy? Earth is about 3.5 billion years old, he’s been around. At a time early on in that history, was the evolution of the ability to breathe oxygen. Living organisms developed a dependency on a gas they could not see, and that they could not smell. But would need so much of. Oxygen had become plentiful on Earth. About 2.3[2] to 2.4[3] billion years ago The Great Oxidation Event, or The Great Oxygenation Event, occurred. If you believe in The Big Bang Theory, this event also made Earth what it looks like today. This was a time, so many millions of years ago, when Earth’s early atmosphere and small regions of Earth’s early oceans swelled with a rise of free oxygen levels. “Free oxygen is oxygen that isn’t combined with other elements such as carbon or nitrogen”.[4] About 3.1[5] billion years ago, the first organisms began to use oxygen on a full-time basis. These were various microbes. Which was pretty much the life forms which existed at the time. This folks was aerobic respiration at the start of its glory. Along with everything it allowed for. Evolutionary biologist at the University of California (UC), Davis, Patrick Shih, says that “The advent of proteins that [could] use oxygen, [marked] a key step in the emergence of aerobic microbes. Which are those able to harness oxygen.”[6] Plus, biogeochemist at UC Riverside, Tim Lyons, says that “The transition from a world that was mostly anaerobic to one that was mostly aerobic was one of the major innovations [to happen to] life.” Nature is extremely innovative.
This was highly efficient of oxygen. Because by using oxygen, “oxygen provided organisms more energy when they metabolised their food”.[7] This early evolution led to aerobes (organisms able to live and reproduce only in the presence of free oxygen[8]) which in turn favoured the presence of multicellularity in nature. The keystone of multicellular organisms is that they could modify Earth’s environment. This was evolutionary biology playing its best performance; giving rise to photosynthetic, breathing organisms. As oxygen levels rose so did the transformation of Earth’s living surface. A growth and transformation of the ecology we know today. The Great Oxidation Event acted to expand the planet’s genetic repertoire, its biodiversity, and the environmental conditions ecological niches needed. It shows us just how universal oxygen is.
Oxygen and the atmosphere it floats in sustains and creates the possibility of life on Earth. It surrounds us, it envelopes us. Like a light blanket. The air we breathe is the oxygen we need. We breathe in heavily, deeply. We evolved to live here, with air, oxygen. Oxygen as a waste product of photosynthesis? Not so wasteful at all, I must say. Our planetary atmosphere renders Earth to be habitable and hospitable.
There’s so much more to the air we breathe.
Have a good week ahead fellas. Ciao
P.S. You can refer to an article titled “How Did Life Learn to Breathe” linked below. Researchers hypothesise that nitrous oxide, N2O, which existed in Earth’s ancient atmosphere may have laid the groundwork for organisms to eventually evolve the ability to breathe oxygen. Research suggests that early microbes breathed nitrous oxide (as many microbes still do today) before they started relying on oxygen for their respiration (microbial respiration). Though this research is difficult to test and hence, not so straightforward:
It’s some pretty cool stuff.
P.P.S. Next week’s post is titled “Earth in all naturalness”, and is about the chemical compound, carbon dioxide.
References
[3] https://www.science.org/news/2021/02/first-organism-use-oxygen-may-have-appeared-surprisingly-early
[4] "Ibid." [3]
[5] "Ibid." [3]
[6] "Ibid." [3]
[7] "Ibid." [3]
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