5 ms·

Newly discovered Lokiarchaeota shows how multicellular life could evolve

30 points by tokenadult 11y ago

gpvos 11y ago
> Because of this, the researchers who discovered it believe it may share a common ancestor with us Sloppy sentence. As far as we know, all life shares a common ancestor with us, even bacteria, fungi, and plants.
- gus_massa 11y ago
  I agree. The scientific article is interesting, but the press report has a lot of misleading parts. Another: > Since the 1970s, life has traditionally been divided into three domains: multicelled organisms, such as plants and animals, and the two domains of single-celled life, bacteria and archaea. There are a lot of unicellular Eukaryotes. For example in this graphic, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Filogenia_Cavalier-Smith_2013_-_5_reinos.svg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Filogenia_Cavalier-Sm... the big orange blob is made of unicellular and almost unicellular Eukaryotes. Plants, Animals and Fungus are the small blobs in the corners.
vanderZwan 11y ago
> Ettema and his team don't know what Loki uses these familiar genes for. Maybe they should try this experiment with the Lokiarchaeota? http://www.nature.com/news/yeast-suggests-speedy-start-for-multicellular-life-1.9810 http://www.nature.com/news/yeast-suggests-speedy-start-for-m...
pmontra 11y ago
Or, in the 2 billion years since the common ancestor, it had plenty of time to evolve those genes like we did. There was an article in SciAm about living fossils recently and how inappropriate that term really is.
bjackman 11y ago
I've found this stuff fascinating ever since I saw the stromatolites [1] at Shark Bay in Australia. They evolved 3.5 thousand million years ago. That's closer to the formation of the earth (4.5Gya) than now. It was thousands of millions more years before even cellular life, let alone multicellular life formed, and we know so little about it. There's so much to read about this root end of the taxonomic tree, but unfortunately scientists seem to be pretty unsure about everything. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite
- danieltillett 11y ago
  While the stromatolites at Shark Bay are amazing they are only a few thousand years old and are biologically nothing like the ancient stromatolites. Scientists are pretty sure about the root of the taxonomic tree - it is how the root came about that is the big mystery.

30 points by tokenadult 11y ago

gpvos 11y ago

> Because of this, the researchers who discovered it believe it may share a common ancestor with us Sloppy sentence. As far as we know, all life shares a common ancestor with us, even bacteria, fungi, and plants.

gus_massa 11y ago
I agree. The scientific article is interesting, but the press report has a lot of misleading parts. Another: > Since the 1970s, life has traditionally been divided into three domains: multicelled organisms, such as plants and animals, and the two domains of single-celled life, bacteria and archaea. There are a lot of unicellular Eukaryotes. For example in this graphic, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Filogenia_Cavalier-Smith_2013_-_5_reinos.svg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Filogenia_Cavalier-Sm... the big orange blob is made of unicellular and almost unicellular Eukaryotes. Plants, Animals and Fungus are the small blobs in the corners.

vanderZwan 11y ago

> Ettema and his team don't know what Loki uses these familiar genes for. Maybe they should try this experiment with the Lokiarchaeota? http://www.nature.com/news/yeast-suggests-speedy-start-for-multicellular-life-1.9810 http://www.nature.com/news/yeast-suggests-speedy-start-for-m...

pmontra 11y ago

Or, in the 2 billion years since the common ancestor, it had plenty of time to evolve those genes like we did. There was an article in SciAm about living fossils recently and how inappropriate that term really is.

bjackman 11y ago

I've found this stuff fascinating ever since I saw the stromatolites [1] at Shark Bay in Australia. They evolved 3.5 thousand million years ago. That's closer to the formation of the earth (4.5Gya) than now. It was thousands of millions more years before even cellular life, let alone multicellular life formed, and we know so little about it. There's so much to read about this root end of the taxonomic tree, but unfortunately scientists seem to be pretty unsure about everything. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite

danieltillett 11y ago
While the stromatolites at Shark Bay are amazing they are only a few thousand years old and are biologically nothing like the ancient stromatolites. Scientists are pretty sure about the root of the taxonomic tree - it is how the root came about that is the big mystery.