All Life on Earth Today Descended from a Single Cell. Meet LUCA
55 points by EA-3167 3 days ago | 15 comments
  • Veliladon 2 days ago |
    Do they live on the second floor?
    • yungporko 2 days ago |
      yes, i think i've seen him before
  • RobinHirst11 2 days ago |
    what a hard article to read.. not the biggest fan of TNR
  • hulitu 2 days ago |
    > All Life on Earth Today Descended from a Single Cell. Meet LUCA

    I thought it was Adam. /d

    • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2 days ago |
      Luca would be including non-human life
  • andrewstuart 2 days ago |
    So weird to think we share a ancestor with mushrooms, trees and jellyfish.
    • lancesells 2 days ago |
      I was thinking about this the other day. Like how all of these different types of things splintered off and evolved in different ways. Trees are these creatures that grow their limbs into the earth and the sky rendering them immobile but they have the same ancestor as us.
      • tonyedgecombe 2 days ago |
        There is some speculation that the last common ancestor between us and fruit flies preceded the evolution of brains. If correct this means brains have evolved independently at least twice.
    • sixothree a day ago |
      Multiple genesis events seems even weirder to me.
    • Ekaros a day ago |
      On other had think of DNA and start wondering would same mechanism appear multiple times independently.
  • biomcgary 2 days ago |
    So many assumptions are necessary for this type of research, particularly for the timing. Inferring such an early age depends on a "clock" that varies based on the stringency of purifying selection. I.e., it is only clock-like to the degree that competition and the level of biological systems integration were essentially static through time.
  • Woodi a day ago |
    LUCA have 2600 genes ? How such thing can be even remotely called "first" ??
    • zktruth a day ago |
      Did you skip breakfast or something? Where did you get "first" from "last"?
    • fbarred a day ago |
      From the article:

      “It’s not the first cell, it’s not the first microbe, it’s not the first anything, really,” said Greg Fournier, an evolutionary biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

      • Woodi a day ago |
        Article also says:

        "LUCA is the furthest point in evolutionary history that we can glimpse by working backward from what’s alive today."

        Which translates to: first in time, IMO

        But my point was: LUCA described here is realy complicated so why it makes some new quality ? Maybe some milestone, yes.