“Production of [wax esters] may represent an adaptation to cross a critical evolutionary threshold, i.e. surviving dehydration and/or dessication cycles,” wrote David Finkelstein, a biogeochemist at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and his co-authors. “This adaptation could have facilitated bacterial migration into the earliest lakes, and aided survival in terrestrial environments.”(...)
When a microbe makes a wax ester from the molecules available to it, it also generates a water molecule. So, making esters could be a way of helping cells survive in environments with varying levels of moisture.I've often noticed these mats in basin lakes when I've been out and about in SE Oregon, but it's cool to think they might give us some important insights into the history of Precambrian life.
“It’s a really cool idea if it actually turns out in a concrete way that this is a way of waterproofing yourself and forestalling the loss of cellular water,” Finkelstein told Wired.com. “The first microbial mass that colonized land sure would have needed some kind of adaptation like this to make it successful.”