Animals, anoxic environments, and reasons to go deep.
One of the classic questions in the early evolution of eukaryotic life concerns the role of oxygen. Many unicellular eukaryotes are strict anaerobes and many animals have long anoxic phases in their life cycle. But are there also animals that can complete their life cycle without oxygen? In an ongoing debate in BMC Biology, Danovaro and colleagues say "yes" while Bernhard and colleagues say "no". The debate concerns reports of anoxic metazoans in deep sea anaerobic habitats.
Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Mlynská dolina CH-1, 842 15, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Marek
M
Mentel
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.|Department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Aloysius G M
AG
Tielens
Institute of Molecular Evolution, University of Düsseldorf, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany. w.martin@uni-duesseldorf.de.
William F
WF
Martin
D000693:Anaerobiosis; D000818:Animals; D017753:Ecosystem; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000378:metabolism; D010100:Oxygen / Q000378:metabolism
D010100:Oxygen