Organic-Inorganic Co-evolution

Organic-Inorganic Co-evolution ...

by Tony Ryals

Before life made a cell it must have occurred,
Carbon and minerals wrote their first word,
It was the basis of the biospheric revolution,
Organic-inorganic co-evolution,
From the simplest life-form viral,
To the most complex evolutionary spiral,
Dances within a watery solution,
Using the elements of organic-inorganic co-evolution
Even the genetic strand has the phosphorous mineral in its carbon configuration
Phosphorous holds not only the key to energy transformation,
And life's respiration
But is also essential to store life's genetic information,
And eventually human intellectualization,
And what would be chlorophyll,
Without magnesium its carbon bonds to fill,
Without the magnesium impetus,
There'd be no photosynthesis,
And what would be the enzyme nitrogenase,
Without molybdenum to fill its carbonaceous space,
Nitrogenase would lack the inspiration,
To perform prokaryotic nitrogen fixation
Without molybdenum fertilization,
And long before hemoglobin came along
Other iron-containing heme groups sang their son&
Before these iron-carbon molecules evolved for respiration,
They protected oxygen-sensitive molecules from oxidation,
After photosynthesis led to oxygen's liberation,
There'd be no vitamin B-12 or cobalamin,
If cobalt hadn't co-evolved with carbon
To make this vitamin,
And what to the biosphere would it have meant,
If selenium hadn't evolved with carbon
to form an anti-oxidant,
Molybdenum calcium iron and sulfur,
Chromium magnesium potassium copper,
Liebig's law of the minimum,
And law of the maximum
You can't have too much and you can't have too little,
You must be somewhere in the middle,
Copper in feed lots makes pigs grow fast,
But then their copper-loaded excrement poisons the grass,
Can't survive the future without respecting the biosphere's past,
The traces of life are in your head,
Bacteria will use them when you're dead.