ABSTRACT
Oxygenic photosynthesis started about 3 billion years ago, when ancient cyanobacteria-like organisms evolved an apparatus capable of capturing and utilizing visible solar radiation (300-700 nm). By using electrons extracted from H2O, the reduction of CO2 to energy-rich carbohydrates with concomitant release of O2 had become possible (for recent reviews on evolution of photosynthesis, see Refs. [1-7]). The unique advent of O2 released by the rst cyanobacteria and its subsequent accumulation in the Earth’s atmosphere was, undoubtedly, the biological Big Bang [8] for the evolution of the whole biosphere. It created an aerobic condition and the requisite background for the development and sustenance of aerobic metabolism and more-advanced forms of life [9-13]. Another great input of cyanobacteria is the evolutionary event of endosymbiosis [14]. Cyanobacteria are the photosynthetic ancestors of plastids in algae and plants (for reviews, see [5,15,16]).
