Comments by "Kate S" (@KateeAngel) on "How a single-celled organism almost wiped out life on Earth - Anusuya Willis" video.

  1. It took hundreds of millions of years for cyanobacteria to "terraform" Earth. Do you wish to wait so long for terraforming other planets?
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  2. I am a microbiologist, and I am not sure about this. Actually concentration of oxygen in ocean and athmosphere was rising very slowly after cyanobacteria started to produce oxygen. And microorganisms reproduce and thus evolve very fast (compared to macroorganisms), thus they probably had enough time to evolve and adapt to rising concentration of oxygen. Surely, some taxonomic groups went extinct, but most survived and adapted. "Almost wiped out life on Earth" is a ridiculous exaggeration.
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  3. Important thing that most of educational videos ignore : unoxygenic photosynthesis existed long before oxygenic. Many microorganisms could photosynthesize (and can) without producing oxygen, and that is simpler and older form of photosynthesis
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  4. Also: not all cyanobacteria are unicellular. Many of them consist of trichoms - chains of cells, and some cells have specific functions like nitrogen fixing, reproduction etc. Those cyanibacteria are technically multicellular even though level of complexity is not as big as among multicellular eukaryotes.
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