The Australian Centre for Astrobiology has won an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant of $715,000 over five years and the Director, Malcolm Walter, has been awarded a five-year Australian Professorial Fellowship.

Here are the details:

The team: Prof MR Walter; Prof BA Neilan; Dr SC George; Prof RE Summons; Dr JW Schopf

The title:  Oxygenating the Earth: using innovative techniques to resolve the timing of the origin of oxygen‑producing photosynthesis in cyanobacteria

2010 :                 $ 160,000
2011 :                 $ 170,000
2012 :                 $ 165,000
2013 :                 $ 120,000
2014 :                 $ 100,000

Project Summary

The early Earth was a hostile place with little oxygen in the atmosphere. Then cyanobacteria ('blue‑green algae') invented oxygen‑releasing photosynthesis. That profound event affected many fundamental processes, from the
course of evolution to the formation of ore deposits. However, estimates of when these bacteria originated are disputed with uncertainties of hundreds of millions of years. We will resolve those uncertainties. We have developed new analytical techniques that we will apply to well‑preserved 2.7‑2.8 billion‑year‑old rocks in Western Australia. We will couple that approach to the use of the latest genetic techniques to reveal the origins of living cyanobacteria.