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Selenium, which is an essential element for animals and prokaryotes and is a beneficial element for many plants, is the least-common of all the elements essential to life. [ 3 ] [ 63 ] Selenium acts as the catalytic center of several antioxidant enzymes, such as glutathione peroxidase , [ 11 ] and plays a wide variety of other biological roles .
The cycle includes carbon sequestration and carbon sinks. [4] [5] Plate tectonics are needed for life over a long time span, and carbon-based life is important in the plate tectonics process. [6] Iron- and sulfur-based Anoxygenic photosynthesis life forms that lived from 3.80 to 3.85 billion years ago on Earth produced an abundance of black ...
A biogeochemical cycle, or more generally a cycle of matter, [1] is the movement and transformation of chemical elements and compounds between living organisms, the atmosphere, and the Earth's crust. Major biogeochemical cycles include the carbon cycle , the nitrogen cycle and the water cycle .
Graphic representation of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. CHNOPS and CHON are mnemonic acronyms for the most common elements in living organisms. . "CHON" stands for carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, which together make up more than 95 percent of the mass of biological system
Agricultural interest in 18th-century soil chemistry led to better understanding of nutrients and their connection to biochemical processes. This relationship between the cycles of organic life and their chemical products was further expanded upon by Dumas and Boussingault in a 1844 paper that is considered an important milestone in the development of biogeochemistry.
See also: Carbon-based life: Fossil fuels: coal, methane and petroleum Textile industry: cellulose Metallurgy: alloys, especially carbon steel 7: N: Nitrogen 2: 15: Bacteria and archaea: nitrogen fixation by diazotrophs All forms of life on Earth: essential component of amino acids and of nucleic acids Earth's atmosphere, soil, and life forms ...
Around two dozen chemical elements are essential to various kinds of biological life. Most rare elements on Earth are not needed by life (exceptions being selenium and iodine), [33] while a few common ones (aluminum and titanium) are not used. Most organisms share element needs, but there are a few differences between plants and animals.
Plant nutrition is the study of the chemical elements and compounds necessary for plant growth and reproduction, plant metabolism and their external supply. In its absence the plant is unable to complete a normal life cycle, or that the element is part of some essential plant constituent or metabolite.