Shifts in metabolic scaling, production, and efficiency across major evolutionary transitions of life
- 29 June 2010
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Vol. 107 (29), 12941-12945
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1007783107
Abstract
The diversification of life involved enormous increases in size and complexity. The evolutionary transitions from prokaryotes to unicellular eukaryotes to metazoans were accompanied by major innovations in metabolic design. Here we show that the scalings of metabolic rate, population growth rate, and production efficiency with body size have changed across the evolutionary transitions. Metabolic rate scales with body mass superlinearly in prokaryotes, linearly in protists, and sublinearly in metazoans, so Kleiber's 3/4 power scaling law does not apply universally across organisms. The scaling of maximum population growth rate shifts from positive in prokaryotes to negative in protists and metazoans, and the efficiency of production declines across these groups. Major changes in metabolic processes during the early evolution of life overcame existing constraints, exploited new opportunities, and imposed new constraints.This publication has 32 references indexed in Scilit:
- Mixed-power scaling of whole-plant respiration from seedlings to giant treesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010
- The genomic basis of trophic strategy in marine bacteriaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
- Use and misuse of the reduced major axis for line‐fittingAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2009
- Two-phase increase in the maximum size of life over 3.5 billion years reflects biological innovation and environmental opportunityProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
- Mean mass-specific metabolic rates are strikingly similar across life's major domains: Evidence for life's metabolic optimumProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008
- The Microbial Engines That Drive Earth's Biogeochemical CyclesScience, 2008
- Genome-scale models of microbial cells: evaluating the consequences of constraintsNature Reviews Microbiology, 2004
- Respiration rates in heterotrophic, free-living protozoaMicrobial Ecology, 1983
- On the origin of mitosing cellsJournal of Theoretical Biology, 1967
- Oxygen Uptake as Related to Body Size in OrganismsThe Quarterly Review of Biology, 1953