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An ancient repertoire of UV absorbing pigments which survive today in thephylogenetically oldest extant photosynthetic organisms the cyanobacteria pointto a direction in evolutionary adaptation of the pigments and their associatedbiota from largely UVC absorbing pigments in the Archean to pigments coveringever more of the longer wavelength UV and visible in the Phanerozoic.Such ascenario implies selection of photon dissipation rather than photoprotectionover the evolutionary history of life.This is consistent with the thermodynamicdissipation theory of the origin and evolution of life which suggests that themost important hallmark of biological evolution has been the covering of Earthssurface with organic pigment molecules and water to absorb and dissipate evermore completely the prevailing surface solar spectrum.In this article wecompare a set of photophysical photochemical biosynthetic and other germaneproperties of the two dominant classes of cyanobacterial UV absorbing pigmentsthe mycosporine like amino acids MAAs and scytonemins.Pigment wavelengths ofmaximum absorption correspond with the time dependence of the prevailing Earthsurface solar spectrum and we proffer this as evidence for the selection ofphoton dissipation rather than photoprotection over the history of life onEarth.

Properties of cyanobacterial UV-absorbing pigments suggest their evolution was driven by optimizing photon dissipation rather than photoprotection