Biotic material

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Biotic material or biological derived material is any material that originates from living organisms. Most such materials contain carbon and are capable of decay.

The earliest life on Earth arose at least 3.5 billion years ago. [1] [2] [3] Earlier physical evidences of life include graphite, a biogenic substance, in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in southwestern Greenland, [4] as well as, "remains of biotic life" found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. [5] [6] Earth's biodiversity has expanded continually except when interrupted by mass extinctions. [7] Although scholars estimate that over 99 percent of all species of life (over five billion) [8] that ever lived on Earth are extinct, [9] [10] there are still an estimated 10–14 million extant species, [11] [12] of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86% have not yet been described. [13]

Examples of biotic materials are wood, straw, humus, manure, bark, crude oil, cotton, spider silk, chitin, fibrin, and bone.

The use of biotic materials, and processed biotic materials (bio-based material) as alternative natural materials, over synthetics is popular with those who are environmentally conscious because such materials are usually biodegradable, renewable, and the processing is commonly understood and has minimal environmental impact. However, not all biotic materials are used in an environmentally friendly way, such as those that require high levels of processing, are harvested unsustainably, or those that are used to produce carbon emissions.

When the source of the recently living material has little importance to the product produced, such as in the production of biofuels, biotic material is simply called biomass. Many fuel sources may have biological sources, and may be divided roughly into fossil fuels, and biofuel.

In soil science, biotic material is often referred to as organic matter . Biotic materials in soil include glomalin, Dopplerite and humic acid. Some biotic material may not be considered to be organic matter if it is low in organic compounds, such as a clam's shell, which is an essential component of the living organism, but contains little organic carbon.

Examples of the use of biotic materials include:

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archean life in the Barberton Greenstone Belt</span> Some of the most widely accepted fossil evidence for Archean life

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James William Schopf is an American paleobiologist and professor of earth sciences at the University of California Los Angeles. He is also Director of the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life, and a member of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences, the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and the Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA. He is most well known for his study of Precambrian prokaryotic life in Australia's Apex chert. Schopf has published extensively in the peer reviewed literature about the origins of life on Earth. He is the first to discover Precambrian microfossils in stromatolitic sediments of Australia (1965), South Africa (1966), Russia (1977), India (1978), and China (1984). He served as NASA's principal investigator of lunar samples during 1969–1974.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earliest known life forms</span> Putative fossilized microorganisms found near hydrothermal vents

The earliest known life forms on Earth may be as old as 4.1 billion years old according to biologically fractionated graphite inside a single zircon grain in the Jack Hills range of Australia. The earliest evidence of life found in a stratigraphic unit, not just a single mineral grain, is the 3.7 Ga metasedimentary rocks containing graphite from the Isua Supracrustal Belt in Greenland. The earliest direct known life on land may be stromatolites which have been found in 3.480-billion-year-old geyserite uncovered in the Dresser Formation of the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia. Various microfossils of microorganisms have been found in 3.4 Ga rocks, including 3.465-billion-year-old Apex chert rocks from the same Australian craton region, and in 3.42 Ga hydrothermal vent precipitates from Barberton, South Africa. Much later in the geologic record, likely starting in 1.73 Ga, preserved molecular compounds of biologic origin are indicative of aerobic life. Therefore, the earliest time for the origin of life on Earth is at least 3.5 billion years ago, possibly as early as 4.1 billion years ago — not long after the oceans formed 4.5 billion years ago and after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago.

Abigail Allwood is an Australian geologist and astrobiologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) who studies stromatolites, detection of life on other planets, and evolution of life on early Earth. Her early work gained notability for finding evidence of life in 3.45 billion year old stromatolites in the Pilbara formation in Australia, which was featured on the cover of the journal Nature. She is now one of seven principal investigators on the Mars Rover 2020 team searching for evidence of life on Mars using the Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry (PIXL). Allwood is the first female and first Australian principal investigator on a NASA Mars mission.

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Marine prokaryotes are marine bacteria and marine archaea. They are defined by their habitat as prokaryotes that live in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. All cellular life forms can be divided into prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are organisms whose cells have a nucleus enclosed within membranes, whereas prokaryotes are the organisms that do not have a nucleus enclosed within a membrane. The three-domain system of classifying life adds another division: the prokaryotes are divided into two domains of life, the microscopic bacteria and the microscopic archaea, while everything else, the eukaryotes, become the third domain.

References

  1. ↑ Schopf, JW, Kudryavtsev, AB, Czaja, AD, and Tripathi, AB. (2007). Evidence of some Archean life: Stromatolites and microfossils. Precambrian Research 158:141–155.
  2. ↑ Schopf, JW (2006). Fossil evidence of Archaean life. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 29;361(1470) 869-85.
  3. ↑ Hamilton Raven, Peter; Brooks Johnson, George (2002). Biology . McGraw-Hill Education. p.  68. ISBN   978-0-07-112261-0 . Retrieved 7 July 2013.
  4. ↑ Ohtomo, Yoko; Kakegawa, Takeshi; Ishida, Akizumi; et al. (January 2014). "Evidence for biogenic graphite in early Archaean Isua metasedimentary rocks". Nature Geoscience . London: Nature Publishing Group. 7 (1): 25–28. Bibcode:2014NatGe...7...25O. doi:10.1038/ngeo2025. ISSN   1752-0894.
  5. ↑ Borenstein, Seth (19 October 2015). "Hints of life on what was thought to be desolate early Earth". Excite . Yonkers, NY: Mindspark Interactive Network. Associated Press . Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  6. ↑ Bell, Elizabeth A.; Boehnike, Patrick; Harrison, T. Mark; et al. (19 October 2015). "Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon" (PDF). Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences. 112 (47): 14518–21. Bibcode:2015PNAS..11214518B. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1517557112 . ISSN   1091-6490. PMC   4664351 . PMID   26483481 . Retrieved 2015-10-20. Early edition, published online before print.
  7. ↑ Sahney, S.; Benton, M.J. & Ferry, P.A. (27 January 2010). "Links between global taxonomic diversity, ecological diversity and the expansion of vertebrates on land". Biology Letters. 6 (4): 544–47. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.1024. PMC   2936204 . PMID   20106856.
  8. ↑ Kunin, W.E.; Gaston, Kevin, eds. (31 December 1996). The Biology of Rarity: Causes and consequences of rare—common differences. Springer. ISBN   978-0412633805 . Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  9. ↑ Stearns, Beverly Peterson; Stearns, S. C.; Stearns, Stephen C. (2000). Watching, from the Edge of Extinction. Yale University Press. p. preface x. ISBN   978-0-300-08469-6 . Retrieved 30 May 2017.
  10. ↑ Novacek, Michael J. (8 November 2014). "Prehistory's Brilliant Future". The New York Times . Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  11. ↑ May, Robert M. (1988). "How many species are there on earth?". Science. 241 (4872): 1441–1449. Bibcode:1988Sci...241.1441M. doi:10.1126/science.241.4872.1441. PMID   17790039. S2CID   34992724.
  12. ↑ Miller, G.; Spoolman, Scott (1 January 2012). "Biodiversity and Evolution". Environmental Science. Cengage Learning. p. 62. ISBN   978-1-133-70787-5 . Retrieved 27 December 2014.
  13. ↑ Mora, C.; Tittensor, D.P.; Adl, S.; Simpson, A.G.; Worm, B. (23 August 2011). "How many species are there on Earth and in the ocean?". PLOS Biology . 9 (8): e1001127. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127 . PMC   3160336 . PMID   21886479.
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