Reviews and syntheses: Photosynthetic oxygen evolution in plants-A potential inheritance from early abiotic oxygen production on Earth

Abstract. The phenomenon of photosynthetic oxygen evolution by plants, as the basis of life on our planet, has long attracted scientists from various disciplines. This process converts natural energy and inorganic carbon into organic matter and oxygen, which are not only crucial for maintaining terrestrial ecosystems but also reveal the early evolution of the Earth's biosphere. In this review, we present evidence from various disciplines, such as paleontology, biochemistry, stratigraphy, geochemistry, and molecular evolutionary biology, to support the proposition that abiotic processes generated the earliest detected oxygen on Earth. The bicarbonate photolytic oxygen release mechanism in photosynthetic organisms is, in our opinion, an inheritance of the abiotic oxygen release mechanism. In contrast, the water photolytic oxygen release mechanism evolved in response to insufficient availability of inorganic carbon. This review provides insights into the evolution of oxygen production mechanisms and their implications for the design of artificial photosynthetic reactors.