“We Are Not Alone”

Five billion years ago, our planet earthwas a very unfriendly place,very hot with carbon dioxide gas bubbled from moltenrock and filled the atmosphere, causing such a massivegreenhouse effect that the planet literally boiled dry. Livingorganism could not survive under those conditions. However,when water vapour to liquefy just less than four billion yearsago, life was said to have appeared but was not life, as we know itnow. Molecules that could replicate to produce daughter molecules with inherited characteristics, eventually microscopic single-celled organisms evolved.These early life forms had to withstand volatile atmosphere with toxic gases, erupting volcanoes, dramatic electrical stormsand the sun’s ultraviolet rays all promoting uncontrolled electrochemical and photochemical reactions. The microbesresembled today’s’, a type of bacteria so called because they thrive in all the particularly hostile corners of the globe.

Inhabit acid lakes, hyper-saline salt marshes and the super heated water issuing from hot vents at the bottom of the deepestocean trenches where they survive temperatures up to 150-250degree C. They also lay buried deep in the polar ice caps, andlurk in rocks. It is possible that life began with microbes in rocksdeep underground, where the heat is intense and there is anample supply of water and chemicals to get the whole processstarted.For around three billion years, bacteria had Earth all to themselves and they diversified to occupy every possible niche. Atthis stage, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere so they evolved many different ways of unlocking the energy bound upin rocks, utilizing chemical compounds of sulphur, nitrogen and iron.

Cynobacteria

Around 2-3 billion years ago, a group of innovative microbes calledthe cynobacteria (previously called blue-green algae) learnt the trick of photosynthesis, using sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into energyrich carbohydrates.As a result,oxygen, a waste product of this reaction, slowly accumulated inEarth’s atmosphere.At first oxygen was poisonous to early life forms, but thenother ingenious bacteria discovered that it

could also be used to generate energy. These new energy sources were richenough to support more complex life forms, but the emergence of multicultural organisms had to await the evolution of eukaryotic cells.

Prokaryotes(Bacteria)

Bacteria are “prokaryotes”, meaning that their cells are smaller than those of all higher organisms “eukaryotes” and have asimpler structure, lacking a well-defined nucleus. However, around a billion years ago, a group of free-living photosyntheticcyanobacteria took up residence inside other primitive single-celled organisms to form the energy -generating chloroplast of the first plant cells. In addition, in a similarly extraordinary manoeuvre, oxygen-utilizingmicrobes called alpha proteobacteria (form of bacteria) became incorporated into other microbes as mitochondria, the power house of animal cells.

Eukaryotic cells(Plants & Animals)

So finally, 6oo million years ago, the stage was set for the evolution of multicellular organisms and eventually theemergence of the plants and animals we know today.However, compared to the diversity of bacteria, all other life forms, however different they may seem, are homogeneous,locked into the same biochemical cycle for energy production, and requiring sunlight for plant photosynthesis to generatethe oxygen used by animals for respiration.We still rely onbacteria(in the form of chloroplastsand mitochondria) for these reactions, and on free-living bacteria for all other chemical processesneeded to maintain the stability of the planet. These bacteria recycle the elements, which are essential for life on Earth and are at the heart of our balancedecosystems, those complex interdependentrelationships that exist between plants, animals and the environment.Although bacteria andsingle-celled protozoa(plasmodium) were the first to inhabit in our earth. The tiniest of allmicrobes, viruses, probably also evolved several million years ago. They have diversified to infect all living thingsincluding bacteria, but exactly how and when they came into being is unknown.

Viruses

The genetic material of viruses consists of either DNA or RNA, but most only code few proteins and cannot survive ontheir own. Therefore, viruses are obligate parasites and only when they have sabotaged their host’s cells do they spring tolife. Once inside they turn the cell into a factory for virus production and within hours, thousands of new viruses are readyto infect more cells or seek another host to colonize.

Evolution “Symbiotic Relationship”

Perhaps because they are so small, nowadays microbesseem to be over shadowed by larger forms of life, but theare still by far the most abundant on the planet, constitutingsome twenty-five times the total biomass of all animal life.There are well over a million different types, mostlyharmless environmental microbes. They are in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat and whenwe die, they set about deconstructing us. Each ton of soilcontains more than 50,000,000,000,000,000 microbes, many of which are employed in breaking down organic material togenerate essential nitrates for plants to utilize; every year nitrogen.-fixing bacteria recycle140 million tons of atmosphericnitrogen back into the soil.Bacteria are masters at survival, and when adverse conditions come along, they are generally ready. Adaptability is the keyto their success, yet in theory reproducing by binary fission yields offspring that are all identical to the parent—a processthat apparently leaves no room for variability. However, although their DNA copying machinery is accurate, mistakesoccur which are corrected by a cellular proofreading system. Even so, occasional errors slip through unnoticed and theseheritable changes to the genetic code (mutations) may cause changes to their offspring. This muted virus becomes a newstrain that can attack human, animals or birds, similar to the newswine flu

, which jumped from birds to pigs and nowattacking human.This is the basis of evolution by natural selection. In humans and other animal’s evolutionary change is a slow process because of our long generation times, but for bacteria, which reproduce very fast and have a less effective DNA proofreading system, rapid change by mutation is their lifeline. Asingle bacterial gene mutatesat a rate of one change per -cell divisions, so in a rapidly dividing colony many thousands of mutants are thrown up. A few of these mutations willconfer a survival advantage and these progeny will then quickly out compete their rivals and come to dominate the population.Bacteria have several other tricks to help them adapt-rapidly to a changing environment, mostly involvinggene swapping. Many bacteria contain

plasmids,

circular DNA molecules that live inside the bacterialcell but are separate from the chromosome and divideindependently.