The origin of complex eukaryotic cells, the type found in all plants and animals, has always been a mystery. Now, strange microbes found in humid zones in China are helping us understand when they came up.
A study this Wednesday in Nature revealed that microbes mysterious living in swamps in the China are the key to discovering the period in which the Ancestors of all animals and plants.
One of the main conclusions of the investigation is that the oxygenation of the earthly atmosphere may have performed a fundamental role in its emergence.
About 2.5 billion years ago, oxygen appeared in the air, released by photosynthetic bacteria. Researchers say this was fundamental to the evolution of eukaryotic beings.
“As atmospheric oxygen levels continued to increase, the symbiotic relationship became increasingly integrated, finally resulting in the merger of partners,” says the investigation leader Hongpo pleasefrom the normal University of East China in Shanghai, quoted by.
The new data brings us a little closer to the understanding of an event that happened thousands of millions of years ago-an event that went to Origin of complex eukaryotic cellsthe type found within our bodies and other complex organisms
In 2015, it was an important occurred when explorers who pierced the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean discovered a new group of archaees called Asgard arms.
Asgard archeics have many genes that were once found only in eukaryotes. To find out which one gave rise to these beings, the present investigation collected samples from 14 coastal wet zones in China. Scientists sequenced all the DNA who managed to find and identified 223 New Asgard Archeys, including 16 new subgroups.
Another, from 2023, had suggested that the eukaryotes emerged from the subgroup Heimdallarchaeia. However, the new study found that eukaryotes as a group are older than HeimdallarchaeiaSo they could not have emerged within this group. Instead, the eukaryotes and the Heimdallarchaeia are closely related “brothers” groups.
New genomic data allow us to estimate when different groups emerged. Investigators say that the last common ancestor of Asgard archeics lived between 3.72 billion and 3.06 billion years ago.
Already the group Heimdallarchaeia It diverged between 3.12 billion and 2.26 billion years ago, suggesting that eukaryotes emerged during the same period.
Hongpo Dong says the new discoveries fit into several previous theories and help us understand when the ancestors of complex life first came up and how they were.
