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Last Universal Common Ancestor

Stem Life & Primordial Diversity

Session # 217 Tues 17 May 2022:

"Investigations into the origin and early evolution of life attempt to elucidate the stepwise transitions leading from abiotic organic synthesis to the last common ancestor (LUCA) of extant life. However, rather than a linear, stepwise accretion of derived states culminating in a "complete" form, evolution occurs via complex processes of diversification and selection, with intermediate forms co-existing, and having distinct evolutionary trajectories independent of their eventual persistence or extinction. The concept of €œStem Life€ captures this full diversity, and is an inclusive framework that does not depend upon any defining character of life, or assume any direct ancestry to extant life. Rather, it includes all systems and their descendants, prebiotic and biotic, that are not descendants of LUCA. This session brings together Origins researchers from both "top-down" and "bottom-up" disciplines, to consider how their work intersects and integrates as part of a more cohesive vision of the primordial living world."

What Does the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) Represent?

(single individual, a species, or a population of species) and how does this inform the emergence of core biological systems, and the geological and
evolutionary context of the LUCA’s emergence? in Chapter 12, Insights from Terrestrial Life (Q9.1f). [National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2022. Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.]

"All extant terrestrial life shares a set of genetic commonalities that indicate the existence of a hypothetical hereditary common ancestor—LUCA—linked to the core mechanisms of cellular machinery, the structure and function of biomolecules, and interactions and dependencies within cells (NASA 2015 and references therein). What LUCA represents remains uncertain. Comparative genomics and cell biology suggest that the organism(s) represented by LUCA were likely cellular and contained many genes, proteins, and biological functions present within modern lineages. Further biological investigation of LUCA will require advances in paleogenomics and molecular evolutionary biology as a complement to ongoing theoretical and experimental research in geochemistry, organic chemistry, and planetary science. Reliable reconstructions of LUCA, including the nature of its cell membrane and of important membrane-related protein families, may help explain why the transition toward organismal individuality and vertical inheritance (as opposed to horizontal genetic transfer) became predominant, and whether we should expect a similar transition for other forms of life elsewhere in the universe."

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Castelle, C.J., J.F. Banfield 2018. Major new microbial groups expand diversity and alter our understanding of the tree of life. Cell 172: 1181-1197.

Koonin, E.V., M. Krupovic, S. Ishino, Y. Ishino 2020. The replication machinery of LUCA: common origin of DNA replication and transcription. BMC Biol. 18(1): 61.

Krupovic, M., Dolja, V. V., Koonin, E. V. 2020. The LUCA and its complex virome. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 18(11): 661–670.

Ku, C., S. Nelson-Sathi, M. Roettger, S. Garg, E. Hazkani-Covo, W.F. Martin 2015. Endosymbiotic gene transfer from prokaryotic pangenomes: inherited chimerism in eukaryotes. PNAS 112(33): 10139-10146.

Lane, N., J.F. Allen, W. Martin 2010. How did LUCA make a living? Chemiosmosis in the origin of life. BioEssays 32(4): 271-280.

Martin, W.F. 2020. Older than genes: the acetyl CoA pathway and origins. Front. Microbiol. 11: 817.

Sakai, H.D., N. Nur, S. Kato, M. Yuki, M. Shimizu, T. Itoh, M. Ohkuma, A. Suwanto, N. Kurosawa 2022. Insight into the symbiotic lifestyle of DPANN archaea revealed by cultivation and genome analyses. PNAS 119:(3): e2115449119.

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Weiss, M.C., F.L. Sousa, N. Mrnjavac, S. Neukirchen, M. Roettger 2016. The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor. Nat. Microbiol. 16116.

Weiss, M.C., M. Preiner, J.C.Xavier, V. Zimorski, W.F. Martin 2018. The last universal common ancestor between ancient earth chemistry and the onset of genetics. PLoS Genet. 14(8):e1007518.

Whicher, A., E. Camprubi, S. Pinna, B. Herschy, N. Lane 2018. Acetyl phosphate as a primordial energy currency at the origin of life. Orig. Life Evol. Biosphere 48:159-179.

Williams, T.A., G.J. Szollosi, A. Sprang, P.G. Foster, S.E. Heaps, B. Boussau, T.J. Ettema, T. M. Embley 2017. Integrative modeling of gene and genome evolution roots the archaeal tree of life. PNAS 114(23): 4602-4611.

Wimmer, J.L., A. N. Vieira, J.C. Xavier, K. Kleinermanns, W.F. Martin, M. Preiner 2021. The autotrophic core: an ancient network of 404 reactions converts H2, CO2, and NH3 into amino acids, bases, and cofactors Microorganisms 9:458.

Wu, F., D.R. Speth, A. Philosof, A. Cremiere, A. Narayanan, R.A. Barco, S.A. Connon, J.P. Amend, I.A. Antoshechkin, V.J. Orphan 2022. Unique mobile elements and scalable gene flow at the prokaryote-eukaryote boundary revealed by circularized Asgard archaea genomes. Nat. Microbiol. 7: 200-212.

Emergence of Life and Earth's Biosphere

Review and analysis of scientific research and theory bearing on knowledge of Earth’s protogeobiosphere, origins and evolution of protobiont complexity, and emergence of life in the cosmos.

Last Universal Common Ancestor