Luca, “Last Universal Common Ancestor”: The “Last Universal Common Ancestor” of all living things on Earth has been discovered and is 4.2 billion years old. [videos]

The last common ancestor of all living things Living organisms, from tiny bacteria to giant redwood trees, including humans, have already inhabited the Earth for 4.2 billion years.

Given the affectionate name Luca, which stands for “Last Universal Common Ancestor,” it was likely similar to today’s bacteria and already had an immune system to defend itself against early virus attacks.

This is according to a study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution led by the University of Bristol in Britain, which explains how life flourished only 400 million years after the birth of our planet and the solar system.

The researchers, led by Edmund Moody, compared all the genes in the DNA of living species, counting the mutations that had accumulated over time since the last common ancestor.

Using the “genetic” equivalent of the equation used to calculate velocity in physics, they were able to go back to 4.2 billion years ago, Luca’s age: “We didn’t expect Luca to be that old,” comments Sandra Alvarez-Carretero, co-author of the study, “but our results fit with the modern view of the habitability of the early Earth.”

The researchers then used the data obtained to shed light on the characteristics of this ancestor: the results showed that it was a complex organism similar to today’s prokaryotes, which are single-celled microorganisms that include bacteria, and that it was not alone.

“It’s clear that Luca was already exploiting and modifying the environment in which he lived, but it’s unlikely that he was alone,” says Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter, one of the study’s authors. “Similar to methanogens (bacteria that use hydrogen as an energy source and survive only in the absence of oxygen), which would help create an ecosystem.”

With information from Ansa.it

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