Lipid biomarkers: molecular tools for illuminating the history of microbial life

Fossilized lipids preserved in sedimentary rocks offer singular insights into the Earth's palaeobiology. These 'biomarkers' encode information pertaining to the oxygenation of the atmosphere and oceans, transitions in ocean plankton, the greening of continents, mass extinctions and cl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature reviews. Microbiology 2022-03, Vol.20 (3), p.174-185
Main Authors: Summons, Roger E, Welander, Paula V, Gold, David A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Bacteria - metabolism
Bioinformatics
Biology
Biomarkers
Biomarkers - metabolism
Biosynthesis
Calibration
Climate change
Clocks
Earth
Earth, Planet
Ecosystem
Exploitation
Fossils
Fossils - microbiology
Genomes
Genomics
Information processing
Lipid Metabolism - physiology
Lipids
Lipids - chemistry
Mass extinctions
Microorganisms
Molecular biology
Oceans
Organic chemistry
Origins
Oxygenation
Paleobiology
Plankton
Robustness
Sedimentary rocks
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Summary:Fossilized lipids preserved in sedimentary rocks offer singular insights into the Earth's palaeobiology. These 'biomarkers' encode information pertaining to the oxygenation of the atmosphere and oceans, transitions in ocean plankton, the greening of continents, mass extinctions and climate change. Historically, biomarker interpretations relied on inventories of lipids present in extant microorganisms and counterparts in natural environments. However, progress has been impeded because only a small fraction of the Earth's microorganisms can be cultured, many environmentally significant microorganisms from the past no longer exist and there are gaping holes in knowledge concerning lipid biosynthesis. The revolution in genomics and bioinformatics has provided new tools to expand our understanding of lipid biomarkers, their biosynthetic pathways and distributions in nature. In this Review, we explore how preserved organic molecules provide a unique perspective on the history of the Earth's microbial life. We discuss how advances in molecular biology have helped elucidate biomarker origins and afforded more robust interpretations of fossil lipids and how the rock record provides vital calibration points for molecular clocks. Such studies are open to further exploitation with the expansion of sequenced microbial genomes in accessible databases.
ISSN:1740-1526
1740-1534
DOI:10.1038/s41579-021-00636-2