Would This Exist Without Cyanobacteria?

Wait, did I not? Oops! I guess breaching containment means explaining a little bit about my favorite bacteria microorganism living thing! Or maybe they're my favorite thing in general...

So, Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic bacteria. They've been around for at least a couple of billion years and are the first organisms that have been known to produce O2.

Cyanobacteria are extremely important in this regard, because they are actually the organisms behind pretty much all of the O2 that currently exists on Earth. You see, the world billions of years ago was very different from the Earth we inhabit today. Back then, Earth's atmosphere was made of CO2 and Methane, and would have been completely uninhabitable for humans, or any of the animals we know and love today. Once they started to produce O2, Cyanobacteria created the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) which changed the composition of Earth's atmosphere from Greenhouse Gas Hell to the Oxygen rich one we know and love today! This was the single most important event in all of Earth's history.

COWPLANTS (TS4) would NOT EXIST without CYANOBACTERIA

There are a couple ways to think about this. You can either think about whether The Sims 4 would exist without Cyanobacteria, or you can think about whether a hypothetical IRL Cowplant could exist without Cyanobacteria. However, you would need Cyanobacteria either way!

Starting with The Sims 4. This video game definitely could not exist without Cyanobacteria, because the game was created by humans (to this day, humans are the only species to ever create a video game). All humans breathe oxygen, and as followers of this blog well know, almost all of the oxygen on Earth was produced by Cyanobacteria about 2.3 billion years ago! Therefore, anything that requires oxygen (even indirectly), including humans and video games, would not exist without Cyanobacteria! But what about if the cow plant existed in real life? Well, cow plants in TS4 look like this:

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Cyanobacteria!

ALMOST ALL MULTICELLULAR LIFE would NOT EXIST without CYANOBACTERIA

This question is actually a lot more nuanced than you might think and answering it took quite a bit of research! Buckle up, this is going to be a long one! Let's start by talking about which organisms are multicellular. Although it's a common misconception that the only multicellular groups are plants, animals, and fungi, this is actually not the case! In fact, multicellularity is not just limited to cells with a nucleus/mitochondrion (eukaryotes)! There are even some multicellular bacteria. Let's look at each group of multicellular organisms and see whether they would exist without cyanobacteria! Animals (would NOT EXIST without CYANOBACTERIA)

Animals would not exist without Cyanobacteria. I've covered this in many other posts, but in short, because all animals breathe O2 and almost all of Earth's O2 was created by Cyanobacteria, it's safe to say that all animals would NOT EXIST without Cyanobacteria. Multicellular Fungi (would NOT EXIST without CYANOBACTERIA)

Although there are some multicellular fungi that do not breathe O2 (they're called Neocallimastigomycota. Say that 5 times fast!), all multicellular fungi still would not exist without Cyanobacteria. This is because the common ancestor of all multicellular fungi DID breathe O2, even if some of its distant grandchildren now don't. This is kind of like how you can technically say that all humans wouldn't exist without fish because the common ancestor of fish and humans was a fish. Therefore, all multicellular fungi couldn't exist without Cyanobacteria because the common ancestor of all multicellular fungi required Cyanobacteria. Plants (would NOT EXIST without CYANOBACTERIA)

This is also something I've covered in a lot of posts, but simply put, plants would not exist without Cyanobacteria because their chloroplasts (the "organelle" in plant cells that does photosynthesis) is a Cyanobacterium. Not "evolved from a Cyanobacterium", it literally is a Cyanobacterium. Every plant that has ever existed has had Cyanobacteria inside of it, and no plant that has ever existed could survive without them. Other multicellular eukaryotes including Red Algae, Green Algae, Stramenophiles, some Alveolates, and Choanoflagellates (would NOT EXIST without CYANOBACTERIA)

These groups of eukaryotes evolved multicellularity independently of the "main three" kingdoms of plants, animals, and fungi. However, all of these groups would NOT EXIST without Cyanobacteria for the same reason that plants wouldn't: they also have chloroplasts! Another multicellular group of multicellular eukaryotes that would NOT EXIST without Cyanobacteria are the choanoflagellates. These are the closest relatives to the animals! Although choanoflagellates don't have chloroplasts, all choanoflagellates need to breathe O2 to survive, which we already know requires Cyanobacteria!

It is UNCLEAR whether other multicellular eukaryotes would exist without CYANOBACTERIA We're getting into the obscure species now. Other multicellular eukaryotes including slime molds, most alveolates, and some other scattered multicellular protists might have been able to exist without Cyanobacteria, but it's unclear. Basically, the question boils down to whether the ancestors of all these different groups HAD to breathe Oxygen. Although the ancestors of all of these groups COULD breathe Oxygen, we don't know if Oxygen was a requirement or not. If O2 was a requirement, then they would not exist without Cyanobacteria. If it wasn't, then they could exist without Cyanobacteria.

SOME Multicellular Bacteria COULD EXIST without Cyanobacteria WITH ONE IMPORTANT EXCEPTION Some multicellular bacteria require Oxygen to survive, including Myxobacteria and Actinobacteria, which means they would NOT EXIST without Cyanobacteria. Some multicellular bacteria do not seem to require Oxygen to survive, including Cable Bacteria, and thus COULD exist without Cyanobacteria. However, we as scientists don't know much about multicellular bacteria yet, so these ideas could change overtime. However, the most important multicellular bacteria (that would not exist without Cyanobacteria) are none other than... CYANOBACTERIA! That's right! Some Cyanobacteria (not the ones in plants, but there are a LOT of different species of Cyanobacteria) are themselves multicellular! ...

LITERATURE would NOT EXIST without CYANOBACTERIA

For as long as humans have had organized societies, we have looked for ways to separate ourselves from the "animals" with a specific thing that makes us "human". In the past, we've thought that things like language, altruism, tool use, and more have been that deciding factor. Although most of these have been disproven as uniquely human, there is one aspect of our humanity that no other organism has ever developed. That aspect is the cross-generational symbolic transmitter of language that is the written word.

Most scientists agree that writing is something that evolved gradually. Humans started using "proto writing" (the precursor to the writing we use today, for example, in Tumblr posts like these) about 9 thousand years ago, which slowly transformed true writing beginning nearly 6 thousand years ago. So, would this human skill exist without Cyanobacteria? NO, it wouldn't! Writing is a uniquely human skill, which means that it wouldn't exist without human intervention. Humans themselves though would not exist without CYANOBACTERIAL intervention! If not for the atmospheric O2 produced by Cyanobacteria, humans would have never been able to evolve in the first place, and writing would certainly never have existed.

A LAST THURSDAYIST VERSION OF OUR WORLD would NOT EXIST without CYANOBACTERIA

So, in a Last Thursdayist version of our world, it is true that we can't factor the existence of atmospheric O2 into the equation of whether things require Cyanobacteria. Although in our world, Cyanobacteria caused all atmospheric O2 to exist (and thus also caused everything that uses that O2 to exist), in a Last Thursdayist version of our world, all of these things would have just spontaneously come into existence.

However, there are a lot of things on Earth which require Cyanobacteria to exist, even without atmospheric O2. For example, plants! Plants, even to this day, literally contain Cyanobacteria in the form of Chloroplasts. That's what they use to photosynthesize! Even if the Earth was created last Thursday, it would have devolved into utter chaos by today without these Cyanobacteria, and most macroscopic things would already be dead.

So, be thankful for Cyanobacteria, no matter how you think the universe came to be what it is today! Whether you're a brain in a box, whether you popped into existence last Thursday, whether G-d created you from clay, whether you evolved from LUCA, you should love Cyanobacteria all the same.

(thank you for running this blog by the way, it is always educational and wonderful)

SOUP would NOT EXIST without Cyanobacteria!

Soup is generally defined as a mixture of edible materials in (usually hot) water. Although making soup is generally considered to be an activity only engaged in by Homo Sapiens, this is actually not the case! Other species of primates, such as Japanese Macaques and Chimpanzees, have actually been observed creating soup - even in the wild - with the use of hot springs as a source of warm water!

The common ancestor of us, Chimps, and Macaques (also the common ancestor of all the old-world monkeys) in whom the ability to make soup may have developed couldn't have existed without Cyanobacteria! All of these creatures breathe atmospheric O2, which would not exist without Cyanobacteria. Therefore, without Cyanobacteria, no soup-makers could have ever come into existence, and there would be no soup!

The BOLTZMANN BRAIN COULD EXIST without CYANOBACTERIA

The Boltzmann Brain is a thought experiment that was done by Ludwig Boltzmann. The idea behind it is that since the universe will exist basically forever and since there are sometimes random fluctuations in the universe that bring things like particles in and out of existence (both of these things are true), that it is actually more likely that "you" are just a "brain in a vat" created by these fluctuations which will only exist for a split second (but was created with memories of existing for an entire lifetime) than it is that our entire universe has existed for 13.8 billion years in all of its complexity.

This argument is not meant to be taken seriously. It is only meant to point out the absurdity of other scientific theories about the origin of the universe or our consciousness.