Manganese: The Metal That Helped Change Earth

When you think about what makes life possible, you probably think of water, oxygen, and sunlight. But there's another important ingredient that often gets overlooked: manganese! This metal has been cycling through rocks, rivers, oceans, and living organisms for billions of years, and its story is connected to one of the biggest changes in Earth's history. 

Manganese moves from rocks into soil and water through weathering, eventually reaching rivers and oceans. Depending on the environment, it can exist dissolved in water or form solid minerals. Microorganisms help control these changes by oxidizing manganese or using manganese oxides during respiration. 

But here's the interesting part: manganese chemistry depends heavily on oxygen. In early Earth's oceans, oxygen was scarce, so manganese often stayed dissolved in the water. As oxygen began accumulating around 2.4 billion years ago during the Great Oxidation Event, manganese oxidation became more widespread, helping create manganese-rich sediments. 

One of the most important evolutionary developments was oxygenic photosynthesis, which evolved in ancestral cyanobacteria. These organisms developed the ability to use energy from sunlight to split water molecules, releasing oxygen as a byproduct. 

Their photosynthetic machinery contains a cluster of four manganese atoms and one calcium atom that helps split water molecules. This means manganese is not only a part of Earth's geological history, but also essential to the process that produces oxygen in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria today.

As oxygen levels increased, Earth's atmosphere and oceans changed dramatically. These changes influenced manganese deposits, altered the cycling of other elements, and helped create conditions that supported the evolution of more complex life. 

Now you may be asking yourself: Why should we care about manganese? Manganese reminds us that even an ordinary looking metal can have an extraordinary history. It travels through rocks, rivers, oceans, and living things in a continuous cycle, connecting Earth's geology with its biology. The next time you see a plant releasing oxygen or walk beside a river, remember that the elements around you are part of a planetary recycling system that has been running for billions of years, and manganese has been helping tell that story all along! 

Oscillatoria princeps dating profile- extra credit

 

            Oscillatoria princeps    131

                📍 10 miles away

As it turns out, we really do need oxygen to survive.

It might seem like an obvious thing, but oxygen really does make our world go round. About 4.6 to 2.5 billion years ago, there wasn't free oxygen in our atmosphere like there is today. In fact, methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas, was the main control on our atmosphere. Only extremophiles could survive and exist in such conditions. That was until, the GREAT OXDIATION EVENT occurred!!! Thanks to the cyanobacteria that was able to survive in such extreme conditions, they were able to photosynthesize and release oxygen into our oceans and atmosphere. Through chemistry, the methane that was dominating interacted with the oxygen and created carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is still a greenhouse gas but it is much less potent than methane. So much so that the Earth actually cooled and was frozen over for nearly 30 million years. 

Large amounts of carbon dioxide poses to be an issue in our society today but those little microbes way back then were probably so excited to be interacting with a new atmosphere that wasn't so hard to stay alive in. Science is really cool and without little microbes doing their thing, we wouldn't be here today. 

 Pyrococcus Furiosus

The Rushing Fireball

If you like an exuberant lady who can handle the heat, then I am the anaerobic, lophotrichous hyperthermophile for you. Let's see if you can stay up to speed and swim with me near my favorite thermal vents in 100 degrees Celcius water. If you aren't as fiery as me, don't bother shooting your shot - the cool guy personality is a real hindrance where I come from, and don't even get me started if you are a mouth breather. Oxygen is NOT my thing. If you are a hyperthermophile like me but you need sulfur, don't expect me to settle in your layer because I can survive without it. I have a lot of requirements, but I'm not high maintenance, I just know what I want. On a positive note, you get extra points if you are a foodie. I like fine dining and I'm all about variety. I want peptides AND carbohydrates for my carbon. 

If you like me, you'll like my group even better. We like to get tangled with our many flagella into the most attractive biofilm on the planet. You better come prepared to pay a high price if you want in on the party, though. Some of our enzymes are tungsten dependant which isn't easy to come by in biological systems.  

Chloracidobacterium thermophilium Dating Profile

 Chloracidobacterium thermophilium

                                    

I may be an acidobacterium, but I don’t have an acid tongue. I’m pretty easy going and neutral on most things. I like hot summer days and swimming in Yellowstone hot springs (44 - 58⁰C is just right 😊). I’m not much of a handyman; I couldn’t fix your CO₂. But I do have a lot of energy from soaking up the sun. I’m fairly independent and like my space, but don’t want anyone to suck the oxygen out of the room. I consider myself cultured, though my friends don’t tend to be. I may need some of your branched amino acids and vitamin B12 is my favorite present at Christmas. My greatest flaw is my job mining sulfur can get a little smelly. I’m new to this website (discovered in 2007), so come say hi!

Desulforudis audaxviator 

 

Chemolithotroph Bacterium. 

    Long walks on the beach aren't really my thing, I'm more of a 'soak in radioactive 60 °C groundwater' kind of guy. I'm not a basement dweller, way below actually, 2.8 km down a gold mine suits me fine. I'm completely self reliant because I can code for all proteins necessary for life, so you might be able to find me on a rocky planet like Mars. 

    Social skills aren't my strong suit, I'm the only organism in my ecosystem. It relies on radioactivity instead of light so its not for most. I have transferred genes from my archaea friends, they have been found at similar depths. I'm motile, Gram-positive, and an obligate anaerobe. I'm not a picky eater, all I need is radioactive material, water, sulfate, ammonia and CO2 so I can reduce sulfate.

(find out more about me here: https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Desulforudis_audaxviator#References)

    

Blast From the Past of September 28th
by Connor Harding
Hey Everyone, its been a while and I thought I posted this a long time ago.

 As you can tell, we have a little bit going on here in the 4% saline column, only a 0.3cm black band. The water is slightly green which is a good indicator of cyanobacteria growth.

 The 12% saline solution had no growth at this juncture, there were no observable bands of colorings.

 Our control, which had no added saline, is growing fantastically, he has two bands, a 0.4cm wide black band that is 2.6cm below the water line. It has a nice thick green band of growth, of 2.2cm wide. His water has turned very green, with an abundance of algae or cyanobacteria growth.

The 8% solution has little growth, a single black band about 0.4 cm wide and it is 0.2cm below the surface line. The water is slightly green, which may be due to an algae or cyanobacteria presence.

The black line that we are seeing is likely a heterotrophic bacteria, due to its close growth with the green oxygen producers. Also because the control had a lot of green growth, the black band was thicker, so there is likely a correlation there, that more food meant more cellular division.