Evolution

In the beginning…

 Earth had a hydrogen based atmosphere

- Ex: CH4, H2, and NH3
- In time, the early atmosphere of Earth changed from a hydrogen dominated one to on
which contained oxygen-rich molecules
- Ex: Co2, H2O, SO2
- Jupiter’s atmosphere today is representative of the ancient atmosphere of the smaller
planets
- Jupiter has such enormous gravity that it retains every molecule, and elements of the
atmosphere cannot drift away as they do on other planets
- Jupiter’s atmosphere is an example of what such primitive atmosphere must have been
like

 Chemical evolution or the Chemosynthetic theory:

- life developed from non-living materials that eventually, by the process of natural
selection over hundreds of millions of years, became able to self-replicate and
metabolize
- This hypothesis presumes that at least 4 steps happened to bring about this chemical
evolution
 1. The abiotic (nonliving) synthesis and accumulation of small organic monomers
like amino acids or nucleotides (Miller-Haldane-Urey Experiment)
 2. Joining of monomers into polymers (protenoids: organic monomers hare heated
and splashed onto hot sand or rocks)
 3. The self-assembly of molecules into droplets that had chemical characteristics
inside different from the environment outside.
• Protobionts (nonliving molecules): Abiotically produced molecules that
spontaneously self-assemble into droplets that enclose a watery solution and
maintain a chemical environment different from their surrounding
 4. The ability to replicate
 The RNA world hypothesis: The first hereditary molecules on Earth were
RNA molecules that served as both a genome as well as the enzymes to copy itself
• A. RNA can function as an enzyme in cells called ribozyme.
• B. RNA can make copies of itself in a test tube
- Note: Lab experiments cannot prove that life was created in this way on the primitive
earth, only that the key steps could have happened

• The Oxygen Revolution

- The oxygen atmosphere that we depended on was generated by numerous cyanobacteria
- Cyanobacteria lived in colonies that formed stromatolites
- released oxygen reacted with dissolved iron ions which precipitated as iron oxide
- took a few millions years until precipitation exhausted the dissolved iron
- This would have caused the oceans to become saturated with oxygen and gas out to
accumulated in the atmosphere
 - Iron rich rocks that were rusted red by oxidation
- cyanobacteria were in trouble because oxygen attacks the bonds of organic molecules
and likely caused the extinction of some of the species

 Endosysmbiosis and the Origin of Eukaryotes

- mitochondria- evolved from aerobic bacteria living within their host cell
- chloroplasts- evolved from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria
- Evidence: both can arise only from preexisting mitochondria and chloroplasts. They
cannot be formed in a cell that lacks them because nuclear genes encode only some of the
proteins of which they are made
- Both have their own genome and it resembles that of bacteria not that of the nuclear
genome
- Both genomes consists of a single circular molecule of DNA
- There are no histones (proteins that DNA is wrapped around) associated with the DNA

Results of Natural Selection…

1. Stabilizing selection: favors the intermediate (not the extremes)
- reduced phenotypic variation

2. Directional selection: favors one extreme

- shifts the frequency curve to favor one end
- most common when members of a species migrate to another environment

3. Disruptive/Diversifying selection: favors both phenotypic extremes