The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) finally reconstructed! | Deep Evolution News

[@CapitalismScorner]

Well, the video was enough interesting, but it could have been more interestig if you had told more (currently known) details about LUCA's structure and its genom.

[@Phrenotopia]

That's certainly a good idea and originally I wanted to do something like that, but was constrained by time and left it at this for now. For example one thing I left out is how LUCA apparently could not fix nitrogen as was inferred or assumed earlier. Since this trait is shared by both archaea and bacteria they must have exchanged it via horizontal gene transfer. I might still do a followup but for now wanted to get the latest news out.

[@user-bv1qy9ck2k]

​@@PhrenotopiaLUCA lost the category of virus by developing an immune system, being the first virus with the ability to attack itself to survive in the absence of opponents.

[@aldenconsolver3428]

@@Phrenotopia well @capitalism's words might have some weight as does Phrenotopia certainly does. As a planetary scientist (with a tendency to hunt for LUCA myself) I think we all have a lot to dig into this a lot deeper and I do not see a universe so simple that 1 school of chemistry would fit all issues. Now one school of bio chemistry should be able to dominate a given environment and I do suspect that any start of a reproducible chemical bio activity would simply run over any later form. Just how many different schools of carbon-nitrogen-phosphate chemistry can exist? My bet is a whole lot more than 1

[@ClimateScepticSceptic-ub2rg]

There is a link to the paper in the description. As your interest has been roused, why not take the next step, and read it?

[@CapitalismScorner]

@@ClimateScepticSceptic-ub2rg you know, English is not my native language and it is hard for me to read scientific style of the text.

[@androgenoide]

There's still a lot of room for speculation about what came before LUCA. I find myself imagining a pre-cellular "gene soup" with an almost chaotic mix of processes going on simultaneously some just undoing the work that others are doing. I wonder if the CRISPR CAS system might have evolved out of an earlier (pre-virus) system for eliminating non-contributing genes. No way to tell except to watch for new developments, I guess.

[@Phrenotopia]

I'd love to speculate in any case. One article I read was that rather than a purely RNA world, the precursors of Life might have been an interplay between simple nucleic acids and a limited set of peptides. It's not hard to imagine how viral particles could arise from that.

[@pedroavellarcosta9389]

i imagine it may have been something between virus and bacteria, with life uptaking more and more of metabolism and cell cycle control untill it did not had any dependency on abiotic processes to produce biomolecules

[@WilliamLund-o1d]

There always will be. It'll be a miracle if we discover anything about the biosphere so far back.

[@stevenlitvintchouk3131]

It wouldn't surprise me if LUCA had competitors: other reasonably complex single-celled life forms, that LUCA successfully competed against and drove to extinction before they could leave descendants.

[@WilliamLund-o1d]

@@stevenlitvintchouk3131 Luca's contemporaries certainly did leave descendants, they just went extinct sometime between then and now. One thing I'm really curious about is how long they lasted, as in when did Luca become LUCA?

[@apocraphontripp4728]

It still exists, WE ARE LUCA.

[@NicholsonNeisler-fz3gi]

WE live on the second floor!

[@apocraphontripp4728]

@NicholsonNeisler-fz3gi Luca never really died, just evolved. As we can all trace back to it. What did you mean?

[@Gelatinocyte2]

@@apocraphontripp4728 it's a Disney(?)/Pixar(?) movie reference; Luca, the titular character, lives on the second floor.

[@Phrenotopia]

Actually it's referring a 90s song by Suzanne Vega :)

[@dariobigongiari875]

❤

[@ronjon7942]

It’s pretty neat how the many branches of science had to come together to put this in front of us. It’s fascinating that scientists have such varied expertise in addition to their core disciplines, and/or desire to collaborate and share their knowledge to come up with this LUCA timeline. When I was in college, I wish I had been intellectually mature and curious enough to grasp the relationships everything has on everything else. For instance, I took chem and biology, but was just trying to grasp fundamentals of each, and kept the two separated. It would have been so much more interesting applying the chemistry learned to the biological process of acetogenesis; or learning an exact timeframe for the Theia impactor resulting in The Moon and the moltenness of Earth serving as a boundary that life must not be older than. It makes for some fascinating lay reading and listening, like a detective story.

[@matthewtheobald1231]

Now the question is, how long did it take life to reach this bacteria level of complexity? If there was bacteria 4.3 BYA then life possibly originated 4.4 BYA or even earlier

[@SuperManning11]

This was a brilliant video! It really touched on so many of the things I’ve been wondering about. Thanks!

[@Phrenotopia]

Thank you! I appreciate your kind words 😊 Glad you enjoyed it.

[@kennethmcgregor5953]

10/10 channel! Especially for putting in the effort to subtitle the videos!! Thank you

[@janetchennault4385]

Please add a functional description of LUCA. Did it have genes for flagella? Or was it more amoebic? What was its cellular membrane like? What other function-related genes did it have?

[@Phrenotopia]

I might dig deeper into LUCA in a follow up video eventually.

[@gergomolnar2193]

He is back baby! Let's hope he stays for longer!

[@Phrenotopia]

Looks like I'm back for good 😊

[@oorzuis1419]

the nice thought about panspermia is the eventuality of resilience and adaptability. as is the consistency in spreading that evolves in more complicated being of the startup life.

[@Budjarn]

“How sophisticated was Luca?” Luca: 🧐🎩

[@ausblob263]

This was a good video, you should make more

[@quantumcat7673]

The fact that life arise relatively soon on Earth makes me think it is an easy process when the conditions are conducive. That in turn suggest life is probably ubiquitous in the universe. Those Mars samples should prove interesting.

[@HuckleberryHim]

Glad to see you back, fascinating research and wonderfully covered. I am always uncertain about dates inferred from genetics, but even in the conservative case, it seems LUCA really did arise very early in the history of life, which has so many profound implications. The stuff about viruses is also wild! Great stuff.

[@embryophytelove]

Very interesting. Thanks for providing links to references. Subscribed.

[@paulbragg7618]

Beautifully presented, action packed vid. Got a like and sub👍

[@Phrenotopia]

Very kind of you to say and much appreciated :)

[@olivierdeplanques708]

Very interesting ,thanks

[@petersmythe6462]

The problem with reconstructing the LUCA genome is it may never have actually existed if there was enough horizontal gene transfer going on. It could be something like a mosaic of every successful species from that time.

[@Phrenotopia]

I should perhaps have clarified that the study extensively took horizontal gene transfer into account in order to arrive at its reconstruction

[@johnkeck]

Fascinating! And I appreciate the larger context and thinking too. Still I'm interested in how they figured out LUCA's genome, which speaks to the dependability of the conclusion.

[@ParagPandit]

Panspermia seems far fetched given the fact that chances of complex chemistry are better on a planet than in asteroid belts.

[@janfungusamon4926]

I think the only chance for panspermia to be real is if the body that hit earth and became the moon had life develop on it, die, and continue on earth. If there were "spores" so to speak of simple life able to stay intact in space we'd be in star wars right now.

[@engineersteveo9886]

How did the first replication protein come about

[@isaacthedestroyerofstuped7676]

Glad to see your take on summarizing the information at hand! Did any of these papers suggest a preferred environment? Like the salinity, pH, or temperature?

[@Phrenotopia]

Many earlier takes on LUCA want to constrain it to deep sea hydrothermal vents but with this paper she might just as well been living closer to the surface. This makes sense because Earth was generally as anoxic and enriched by volcanic activity as nowadays only around the black smokers in the deep.

[@ulimenzebach7918]

Nice! Does this type of analysis factor in horizontal gene transfer between different species?

[@Phrenotopia]

Yes, indeed it does! 😃

[@philojudaeusofalexandria9556]

Considering how complex it is, and the age of 4.1-4.3 billion years, and how many hundreds of millions of years it took for life to take further steps in complexity, I think this is strong evidence for some kind panspermia. I think a lot of the basal complexity arrived on life existing on asteroids.... and in 200-300 million years, it had evolved to be well-adapted to (then existing) earth conditions and become our LUCA.

[@Phrenotopia]

I think we should specify what we mean with "Panspermia" by using different terms e.g. "Transpermia" when it's between neighbouring planets... I'd do a video on that perhaps

[@philojudaeusofalexandria9556]

​@@Phrenotopia Yeah - I just meant the general concept of abiogenesis not occurring on earth. The asteroid speculation was kind of random - I think we are kind of clueless on how/why/when/from where - if not on earth.

[@SuperManning11]

Is the current thinking still based on life beginning around ocean vents, with molecular exchanges and processes driven by the energy of the vent itself? Or do we think there was an original spark that set things in motion?

[@Phrenotopia]

I need to look into this a bit more, but the latest most fascinating theory I heard involves tides and frequent drying and inundating of certain prebiotic chemicals induces the formation of lipid membranes.

[@SuperManning11]

@@Phrenotopia fascinating! I know that certain molecules are hydrophobic and others hydrophilic, which makes them naturally form a circular cluster. I’ve always wondered if that might be the process used to initially form cell walls. I’m probably missing some glaring reason why that’s not the case. I do seem to spend a great deal of time thinking about these things. Thank you for your response! This was a very interesting video

[@4124V4TA-SNPCA-x]

Nice to see you also review this research from your channels POV. And I've enjoyed this video. However, your video was long in relation to the content covered but you did it in a nice storytelling way with the inclusion of some related data. You could have mentioned more about what is known (and speculated) about LUCA's genome and physical properties / structure. (Maybe a future extended version or a more detailed video on LUCA and the viruses of it's day?) Personally I love that LUCA and CRISPR CAS is at least this this old. Not to mention viruses. You could mention /discuss theories about theb origins of the CRISPR CAS system in one of your future videos. I think it may have evolved from a very early gene elimination system, adapted for a new role. I also like how ancient it is in every sense of the world but relatively brand new to modern science. To answer your question i do find it possible that live emerged and became this complex and diversified in 1-2 hundred my. They had very short lifespan, propagated quickly and efficiently, conditions were optimal but also very harsh and competition was strong. (And while in general i give it possible I dislike the theory of panspermia as our originator because of the reasons you have mentioned in the video.) I can also imagine knowing how quickly life diversifies and conquers new or recently vacated niches that live quickly diversified from the survivor or winner LUCA into multiple kinds of early bacteria And early Archea as we know them today between 4.1 and 4 bya. Quickly edited for swypoes.

[@Phrenotopia]

Yes, I am definitely interested in diving deeper into LUCA and steps that could have led to it.

[@persimmontea6383]

Great stuff well told! Also, the RNA polymerases of the Pox viruses (and some others) indicate there may have been a third branch of life in addition to the Eubacteria and Archea ... but this has been overlooked by our bias towards Ribosomes which this branch of life lost as it became viruses. My guess is life started real fast after the conditions were reached ... and so even one million years is a HUGE amount of time. Think of a vast number of individuals floating around in huge seas .... that is a lot of opportunity for trial and error.

[@50gens]

What is it named?

[@Phrenotopia]

I would love to learn more about that and yeah millions of years is actually a long time for biochemical experiments and arguably plenty for major progress

[@BossPlayer-t6q]

Does LUCA have any association with DONCIC (Dynamics of Origins and Natural Cellular Interconnections)?

[@Phrenotopia]

I have never heard of this and also a Google search turns out empty. Could you elaborate?

[@BossPlayer-t6q]

@@Phrenotopia Sorry, it was a dumb joke on my part. Luca Doncic is an NBA basketball player and I was trying to make a pun with his name.

[@Phrenotopia]

Well played 😆

[@LiquidusEvilus]

What is you stance? Virus first or cell first?

[@Phrenotopia]

I'm thinking virus first and have a specific hypothesis for that. Topic for another video...

[@Untrustedlife]

I think we will find life on the ice shelf moons and I think that will be very scary.

[@Phrenotopia]

Maybe a good topic for a video 😄

[@svendtang5432]

I find it fascinating not at all scary think of the implications 🎉

[@jamesmaybrick2001]

Why scary? Its not like they will be little green men with lazer guns.

[@matthewdolan5831]

Edging back to the Thea fusion event - the instigator for sure.

[@Phrenotopia]

Or maybe the tides introducing wet dry cycles creating interesting chemistry

[@goyoelburro]

Pretty amazing stuff. Thanks for sharing!

[@aidanokeeffe7928]

Do you ever just think about how insane this universe is?

[@garg4531]

He’s back! Can’t wait to watch!

[@cernunnos_lives]

I think the early Earth must've had some very surprising environments. I think the deep Earth will have remnants of the environments that gave birth to life. I also think Antarctica will be key to finding the answers to many questions.

[@TheEbrithil2]

Why is Earth (or a similar planet) visible in the sky in the picture at about 3:40?

[@Phrenotopia]

It's supposed to be the moon, but the AI botched it a bit.

[@TheEbrithil2]

@@Phrenotopia another reason not to use AI pictures

[@leslieviljoen]

Wow! Has this genome been compared to other genomes to find the most similar modern day one?

[@fossilsfabe4304]

Surely it should be known as FUCA - First Universal Common Ancestor .

[@Phrenotopia]

No that's further back in time. This is specifically the last one.

[@robappleby583]

All ancestors of FUCA would be UCAs, so it wouldn’t be the first.

[@stanleydodds9]

The whole point is that LUCA is the last one - if you watched any of the video, you would notice that he is very clear that it is by no means the first one as you suggest; there were certainly enough generations before it, perhaps on the order of hundreds of millions of years of them, to get it to over 2000 protein coding genes. Why do we choose to study the last one? Because that's basically the earliest thing we can deduce a lot of information about from just looking at the similarities and differences between all of the genetic material that still exists on Earth today. If we go earlier (somewhere before LUCA, after FUCA) then we are extrapolating from a lot of unknowns, and it's a lot harder to have the same level of certainty. Note that we are assuming that there is at least some UCA for this to make sense - that is, that all modern life does have a common ancestor - which is very likely the case (at least, all modern life seems to have common ancestry, and LUCA excludes viruses; it's not clear to me whether they fit in before or after LUCA, or if there's a mix. And I don't know how significant horizontal transfer was at this time, hence I'm not sure whether it's more appropriate to say "ancestor" or "ancestry" at these early points in the history of life). If this is confusing, just imagine a simplified tree of life, with all of the branches with extinct life removed (only very ancient/weird extinct life will make a difference though). LUCA is at the top of the trunk of this trimmed tree, at the point where the first branching happens (probably branching into bacteria and something like asgard archaea). Anything after LUCA is not a universal common ancestor; at least one of bacteria or archaea don't descend from it, for example, so it's not universal. Anything before LUCA is not the last common ancestor, because, trivially, LUCA comes later. So LUCA has a specific meaning, where "last" is important.

[@TicTac2]

You suggested that either Earth had specific conditions that we can't identify or if not, life must have started on Venus and Mars as well. I think another permutation is that there is a freakish element to abiogenesis so the freak event just simply didn't happen on Mars/Venus?

[@secondbeamship]

It's bizarre that it takes only two hundred million years for unicellular life to evolve but 3.5 billion years for multicellular life. Is it possible that multicellular life has evolved multiple times? But only one lineage survived? (In addition to unicellular life only showing up.)

[@Phrenotopia]

That is a very good question! There are some hints at earlier multicellular experiments but they're very contentious... It looks like there is the need for a certain level of oxygen for multicellular or more complex life which first happens half a billion years ago. This is also a constraining factor for the HZCL; habitable zone of complex life.

[@sweetypuss]

it's bizarre how many inconsistencies are in the evolution narrative. almost as if we're deliberately being driven away from God by the spawn of satan?

[@Gelatinocyte2]

What's the length of time between the first eukaryotes and the first multicellular organisms again?

[@Phrenotopia]

@@Gelatinocyte2 There are conflicting estimates but from the article at hand puts LECA at somewhere between 1000 and 1600 Mya. The FECA however may be a lot older still, maybe even 2 Gya. The common ancestor of metazoans may be anywhere between 1 Gya and 665 Mya. It seems a bit of a stretch this, though.

[@321ssteeeeeve]

Interesting! There does seem to be a philosophical question unanswered by describing a 4 billion year old form of life “modern”. So it makes one think does life evolve in a direction to merely adapt itself and become more complex, or does the planetary system in which it resides, provide the conditions necessary for its survival, through the design of life itself?

[@Pierluigi_Di_Lorenzo]

0:21 It didn't live 'in the oceans' but near hot springs.

[@Phrenotopia]

That is up for debate

[@williamcashell6357]

I think we have estimated the genome. This was a very long time ago. It is very interesting but I think us being sure of the genetic structure of the last common ancestor might be a tad hasty.

[@Phrenotopia]

The recent study I refer to does more than just estimate. It inferred a lot of the structure of the ancestral genome taking into account a lot of factors such as horizontal gene transfer.

[@williamcashell6357]

@@Phrenotopia I don’t mean estimation as a bad thing. You are talking 3 billion years ago, on some level you still have to guess.

[@barsenlazar]

If Luca was that complex right at the beginning of the hadean that is the most convincing evidence for pan spermia theory I've seen.

[@watchit3746]

Is Luca also the "ancestor" of the Ediacarn fauna?

[@Phrenotopia]

Ultimately yes absolutely!

[@whoff59]

How do you know ?

[@mshonle]

What if you needed a bootstrapping panspermia scenario in order to get more complex life? For example, abiogenesis may be common, but fleeting, but Earth having help from Venus and/or Mars could’ve created a situation where: (1) two different forms of self-replicating chemicals come into contact; where (2) it would have been unlikely for both to be active in the same environment at the same time; unless (3) one came from an external source. This would be some form of a Rare Solar System Hypothesis, where chemical evolution is commonly found, but bootstrapping abiogenesis from two or three different chemical systems would be extremely rare. If the anthropic principle is a guide, we should probably assume our planetary neighbors are a necessary part of the system rather than excluding the possibility. Curious to know your thoughts?

[@Phrenotopia]

Oh I'd love to speculate on that. Right now the biggest question is what came first: Peptides or Nucleic acids. Or was it a third kind of catalytic molecule now erased? You could see different worlds generating different kinds of replicators and happily exchanging materials via asteroids. That would really upscale the laboratory. Then a golden combination is made that takes it to the next level. Intriguing thought indeed! Weak Panspermia i.e. confined to our solar system, is not all that implausible.

[@roberthuff3122]

How does a prebiotic soup become LUCA-lite in less than 100-200M yrs given the decidedly hostile environment and the staggering combinational barriers? The optimism expressed here is not justified.

[@Phrenotopia]

LUCA did not arise from a prebiotic soup as I said so very explicitly in the video.

[@roberthuff3122]

@@Phrenotopia lite

[@Phrenotopia]

@roberthuff3122 Define a "LUCA-lite" o

[@andreasboe4509]

The hard thing isn't evolution. That can happen very quickly if the scale is large enough. The hard thing is to get it started. // I like your suggestion that panspermia not only moves the bucket, but increases the likelyhood for life to have started spontaneously on "a planet" rather than specifically on Earth. I have never realized this before. It can be used as an argument that life is more likely to have started elsewhere than here, although the transport itself decreases the likelyhood again. Very interesting.

[@katherandefy]

Hmm well it’s intriguing. I wonder if it’s possible to be mostly sure of LUCA.

[@jeffreystarits2783]

how do you know life evolved on Earth and not just hitched a ride to earth

[@Phrenotopia]

Well I do mention Panspermia in this video if you watch it til the end.

[@4124V4TA-SNPCA-x]

I doubt anyone can claim to *_know it._* I also like to sometimes imagine that (just like also mentioned in the video) life was at time present in 3 planets, hell, maybe on one or two outer ice moons. And that maybe during great catastrophic events made panspermia between two or with tone maybe between all 3 planets (via expelled and formed meteors and comets). Then life had to 'duke it out' and 'there could be only one' winner. Or maybe multiple, or they joined forces. Maybe eukaryotes were formed by LUCA's bacterian descendant inhabiting LUCA's archaean descendant, then plant cells also incorporated photosynthetic bacteria that gained it's green chloroplast from that Martian 'bacteria' they consumed. And of course don't forget the recently discovered 4th ancient endosymbiotic helpers. How cool it would be to find out in the future that some Earth bionts are actually Earthian-Martian hybrids of sorts?!? It's mind blowing just how interconnected and complex we are even in unicellular scale. Yet built wonderfully designed, complex structures out from relatively simple elements. But it's too much of a tangent. Sorry for my late night/early morning tired rambling.

[@Phrenotopia]

@@4124V4TA-SNPCA-x Yeah, the exchange of material between planets just *within* our solar system is a real possibility with all the ruckus going round in its history. I guess this could be called "weak panspermia" and I could have made that distinction clearer.

[@HarryGuit]

BTW and out of topic: why are the scientists listed by their nationalities? I mean: scientists should be beyond that. Right?

[@УжиВанен]

if you want to see all comments click "newest first". KZbin hides unwanted comments. does not notify of a response if KZbin does not like the letter

[@Phrenotopia]

Yes, I regularly check this.

[@TourniquetTwin]

Pretty sure Earth is not the only place in the universe where life is possible, and I can’t exclude the possibility that we’re not alone. The theory of abiogenesis seems quite plausible…I therefore think it’s likely we aren’t alone - the universe is a vast expanse. As for panspermia, I am having a hard time imagining life would survive the journey through our atmosphere without burning to a crisp.

[@Gelatinocyte2]

I think it is outdated to think of eukaryotes as a separate domain, borne out of the fusion between archaea and bacteria - as if the endosymbiosis event is imperative to eukaryogenesis. We just discovered the Asgard superphylum of archaea, and they all have most if not all eukaryote signature proteins; they're basically proto-eukaryotes IMO. Eukaryotes are Archaea... that developed a nucleus, and eventually incorporated a lot bacteria-related stuff - and bacteria themselves - into themselves.

[@Phrenotopia]

That makes a lot of sense really

[@shinysands]

i think its fair to make eukaryotes their own domain. theyre so much different from archaea and bacteria, obviously.

[@Gelatinocyte2]

@@shinysands the problem with calling eukaryotes a domain is that they're deep within the archaea domain, and like I said, they're part of the Asgard superphylum; they weren't much an earlier off-branch of archaea. Though, to be honest, I'm not super familiar with how taxonomy works; I'm looking at this more from the cladistics perspective.

[@shinysands]

@@Gelatinocyte2taxonomy is kinda weird and even though eukaryotes are archaea they can still be a separate domain. for example, birds are a class despite being way more derived than say, mammals, and being within another class, reptiles. theyre just way too different to be like a family or order and the same applies to eukaryotes.

[@rursus8354]

I've counted on the mean kinetic energy of the Late Heavy Bombardment, it didn't heighten the mean temperature of Earth more than a couple of degrees Kelvin. For any one bolid to be as destructive as destroying all life, the size of it need to have been something like 400 kilometres. Could have happened, but today there are only four asteroids that large. With a much huger asteroid belt before the LHB, the number could have been something like 40-100 such asteroids. Not impossible that one such could have collided with the early Earth, but not very likely.

[@Phrenotopia]

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

[@secondbeamship]

Can we trace all viruses to a last common ancestor as well? What if we find a life form or virus that is not descended from LUCA or Virus LUCA on Earth? Furthermore, why did life only start once seemingly? Or at least twice with viruses?

[@fgomez209]

too many mutations to know ... we don't even know where covid-19 virus comes from.

[@Phrenotopia]

Good question and that would be interesting indeed. Alas it looks like viral genomes are fsr to reduced for this but I'll look into it.

[@bradzylman3432]

Really hope we send a probe to Europa and find out.

[@roberthuff3122]

Interestingly, looks like a TIC TAC.

[@Phrenotopia]

Not being sponsored

[@reYouMad]

Love Dutch English as Dutch man ❤️😅❤️

[@engineersteveo9886]

There’s a relationship between entropy and replication

[@LudwigE-f7u]

If it takes only a 100 Mio years to get from simple organic chemicals to life with more than 2500 genes, then we should be able to observe increased chemical complexity under lab conditions in a couple of years. Are there "long term primordial soup" experiments and what are their results?

[@Phrenotopia]

I'm not so sure really you did the math on that

[@LudwigE-f7u]

@@Phrenotopia I'm not so sure that you could do the math on that. There is a looooong way in terms of complexity and entropic change when you go from simple sugars to cells. Maybe one could observe the very, very beginning of that path after a few years? The truth would be, as always, in the lab.

[@Phrenotopia]

@@LudwigE-f7u Well, if you can't do the math on it, then it remains to be seen how quickly we can reproduce this. For all we know, it may take thousands of years. A few labs is next to nothing compared to the giant vat that is the Earth.

[@animusadvertere3371]

I'd take the age estimate with a large dose of salt.

[@SuperManning11]

Wouldn’t that contaminate the specimen? 😂

[@rabenfedersonnenhut]

An highly interesting early step on the way to crab.

[@Phrenotopia]

Nah. Carcinization is overrated widely misunderstood. I ought to pull it apart in a dedicated video

[@rabenfedersonnenhut]

@@Phrenotopia I know, it's just a jest. People seem to think it somehow can happen to everything, imagining crab-humans walking their crab-dogs through the park, watching the crab-bees pollinating the crab-flowers while sitting under the crab-oak and feeding krupuk to the crab-ducks and crab-pigeons. It's a bit like evolutionary biology's very own little 'QUANTUM!' or material engineering's 'NANO!', but less intelectually dangerous than 'missing link' or 'living fossil' at that. It exists, but because people know only that and very very little else about the field its connected to, it easily flows to fill the gaps, making it look way bigger in relation to all the things the casual dabbler in the topic simply can not take into account to get a bigger picture. And yet, it makes a nice meme, come on^^

[@sofia.eris.bauhaus]

great video, but one request: i assume a lot of the illustrations in the video have been AI generated, which is totally fine with me, but could you maybe "reference" them? i think it would be nice if you gave the prompt, the name and version of the model, and to what extent it is edited. maybe as a tiny overlay with a bigger text "AI generated". or just put it into the description.

[@Phrenotopia]

Good point. I will look into this and be more diligent going forward.

[@sofia.eris.bauhaus]

@@Phrenotopia thanks, i'm glad you understand 😊. love your channel!

[@morgan0]

also life could've existed on the gas giants themselves, or rather the initial rocky world which was large enough to have runaway capture of hydrogen and helium. although it's less likely that an impact could blow it off and onto another world given the high surface gravity. my bet is on mars originating life, as it would've cooled first and wasn't remelted by later impact. and the lower surface gravity would've eased the ability of small and less energetic impacts to blast life into space.

[@A3Kr0n]

It would be interesting to know why people think they know what billions year old DNA looked like. How do you go that far back?

[@Phrenotopia]

Common genes have a molecular clock so to speak meaning the accumulation of neutral mutations which allows you to trace back its development by comparing the changes between different lineages. There's more to it but this is the basic gist of it

[@fgomez209]

most chemical reactions are fast, why "only" 200 million years has to be a problem?

[@Phrenotopia]

Exactly! I'm not really phased by it but it's still fascinating to think about how it must have progressed

[@aaaaa5272]

Please define a "modern lifeform"!!

[@Phrenotopia]

I did

[@catvanbrian9470]

So the next step is to recreate it as an artificial organism?

[@aracoixo3288]

40k+100k+250m+1b+.01

[@aracoixo3288]

N☝️ce👋

[@mrshankerbillletmein491]

Once upon a time long ago and far away

[@bushhead987]

Yay

[@RadicalCaveman]

Very interesting, but this is only one study. I'm sure there'll be other biologists who don't agree with it and think LUCA was something quite different.

[@Phrenotopia]

Oh yes absolutely! I should perhaps have clarified that singular studies like these need time to coalesce into consensus. Even the person who himself coined the term "LUCA" was highly sceptical.

[@InternetDarkLord]

Was LUCA 1. a species 2. one individual organism, or 3 nobody knows?

[@Phrenotopia]

It's supposed to be a single species.

[@Neon-ws8er]

If its really that well adapted it cant be the LUCA though right?

[@Phrenotopia]

Why not? It's got an evolutionary mileage of up several hundreds of millions of years...

[@kwgm8578]

By extension? You must have information that's out of this world!

[@Tacko14]

Luca came before Kevin, then?

[@DJTheTrainmanWalker]

Frankly the data increasingly kinda supports panspermia... Just not in a straightforward or linear way. Non-terran evidence of amino acids has been detected, both in meteorites and on spectrographs of interesting gas clouds. Other complex organic molecules may also be out there, peptides, nucleosides, nucleotides, ribonuclotides.... It's not so much that life originated off Earth, as it is that many of its components do.

[@Phrenotopia]

Yeah. Weak Panspermia i.e. confined to our solar system, is not all that implausible. You're just upscaling the laboratory to the entire solar system or at least in the habitable zone. Lots of interesting chemistry happening in interplanetary space already.

[@tedkrasicki3857]

Panspermia thinking just moves the goal posts and stretches the playing field.

[@henrignu7005]

Very interesting! I wonder if the researchers have any notion of what the critical or final adaptations LUCA evolved to become such a runaway success. Seems to me that there must have been many "proto-LUCA" candidates competing in the anoxic early biosphere; but one of them, the direct ancestor of LUCA, must have evolved some final 'tweak' that made it a breakout success... I wonder if this is a good model for LUCA, and if so, what that 'tweak' was.

[@houstandy1009]

Anyone fancy explaining how natures random rolls of the dice came up with 2657 genes in the rather short time period of 100-300 million years

[@Phrenotopia]

It's called "Natural Selection". You're welcome.

[@houstandy1009]

@@Phrenotopia A bit of a condescending reply don't you think. Natural selection explains how more survivable genes are saved and passed down to produce change over time. natural selection does not describe how a gene that encodes a functioning protein arises de novo.

[@icoudntfindaname]

​@@houstandy1009natural selection doesn't only apply to natural things, it also applies to other systems with similar core rules like self perpetuating chemical rns, which is the foundation of DNA

[@houstandy1009]

@@icoudntfindaname The question would still remain the same. Does anyone care to explain how natures random dice rolls come up with a single self replicating RNA molecule

[@NicholsonNeisler-fz3gi]

LUCA was the boss the killed the old system and put every other life form in its place.

[@herbertfawcett7213]

It would have to have been a rugged life form, the moon would have created massive tides that would have scrubbed the surface of the Earth twice daily with short days!

[@Phrenotopia]

You're exaggerating tremendously. By the time oceans formed (or re-formed) around 4100 Ma, the Moon was already 275,000 Km away from the Earth. This relative proximity generated a strong equilibrium tidal force. This would create much greater tides, but certainly not "scrub the surface".

[@nealdaniel8800]

Thanks for this honest summary. Intuition tells me it could not have been panspermia. Early viruses were too simple and dependent on terrestrial fauna to be of cosmic origin. Luca was built well for a terrestrial existence, and even adapted with viral defenses. Luca was a product of earthly processes. If they were both cosmic invaders, eons of evolution would have made them at least as complex as today's microfauna and certainly not in the same ecological relationship. These two originated on the early earth and they evolved together in a terrestrial environment.

[@ralphstern2845]

@@nealdaniel8800 viruses existed before fauna.

[@eoachan9304]

Actually, research winding back the genetic rate of change have found that life appears to be OLDER than earth by quite a lot ;) Perhaps panspermia is valid then?

[@Phrenotopia]

Ha! That could be but calibrating these genetic clocks is tricky. Not everyone is even convinced by the current findings and dates.

[@PaulSpades]

You can't really date a planet, you can only date some crust samples. And genetic rate of change can vary wildly depending on environment constraints. Geologists find old rocks, date them 4bil yo. Biologists analyse a theoretical organism made from the combination of living cells that COULD have maybe lived at some point very long ago, but probably not really, "date" it 4bil yo. Obviously you can't date something that doesn't exist, and has never existed, but... There's yer "science" news.

[@hc8379-f4f]

What do I think? As an expert KZbin watcher, I haven't the foggiest.

[@lucam1926]

He just like me, he just like me for real.

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

11:15 i think earth is unique somehow and the only place in the universe with life, i am a non-beliver so its not based on any religious beliefs, but the question is very simple, where are the signs of lifes elsewhere?

[@Phrenotopia]

The funny thing is that we can't even dismiss this idea until we've actually found Life elsewhere. For all we know, we're truly alone. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

@@Phrenotopia - how do something we are not aware of exist? And something we never will experience, how does that exist? How large part of the question about life in the universe are wishful thinking?

[@mdb1239]

Prebiotic primordial soup? The Earth was flowing everywhere with lava and being bombarded with asteroids tens-of-miles (hundreds-of-miles?) wide. The Moon was so close to the Earth that it was buckling Earth's thin crust like every 10 hours. Prebiotic primordial soup? You have got to be kidding? Right?

[@Phrenotopia]

It sounds like you're going a bit too far back in time. If you had paid attention to what I said you would know I was talking about the period when the oceans were stably present. Life could not have arisen out of nothing if not from prebiotic chemistry.

[@mdb1239]

@@Phrenotopia We have pretty strong evidence that life existed on Earth over 4 billion years ago. Earth was being bombarded by huge chunks of space rocks then. And the Moon was still very close to Earth.

[@Phrenotopia]

It doesn't sound like you've fully watched the video. Also, you're arguing from personal incredulity rather than evidence. Try again.

[@mdb1239]

@@Phrenotopia Your vid brings out the same facts, but your conclusion is life is easy to start. But human attempts to produce live - a simple LUCA=type cell has totally failed and this with human INTELLIGENCE bearing its utmost efforts. ---- Life coming into existence under those conditons of early Earth of 4+ billion years ago is impossible from natural dumb chemical processes. Plus Earth was being bombarded with life extinguishing asteroids as well. ---- Life coming into existence from dumb chemical process is impossible. And life existed on Earth as soon as it was physically possible due to lava flows and bombardments. ==== My point is life coming into existence is NOT easy. Actually impossible from simple dumb chemical natural processes.

[@Phrenotopia]

You're making a lot of unfounded statements here and still mostly arguing from personal incredulity. That is not scientific. Like I said in the video, the fact is we have no idea whether it is easy for life to appear or not. We just know that it apparently did. Whether the explanation is "rapid" abiogenesis, panspermia or some other unknown mechanism remains to be seen.

[@Vagolyk]

What was lookalike? Heh

[@carolinecarter6874]

Pharaoh,

[@ralphstern2845]

Life before oceans? Life surviving moon creation event? Mind blown.

[@Phrenotopia]

Neither of those. Only the survival of a possible Late Heavy Bombardment.

[@ralphstern2845]

@@Phrenotopia you did not listen thoroughly.

[@ralphstern2845]

@@dbptwg then you have failed to communicate clearly.

[@jasonkinzie8835]

@@ralphstern2845 He isn't saying that LUCA existed before the moon creation event or before the oceans. Where in the video did he say this? Give a time stamp.

[@edgein8632]

Nice story but cellular biology and biochemistry shows it’s all just a story. Life could not form on its own no matter how much time is given. The simplest living cell capable of dividing requires a genome with a minimum of 473 genes, hundreds of proteins, a form of metabolism and a functional phospholipid membrane to regulate the internal environment. None of the parts can be created outside of a living cell. That means everything had to be created at the same time and immediately be fully functional and part of a living cell. A cell cannot be gradually built part by part. Even Jack Szostak admits this. And no, there was no RNA world since RNA reacts with itself and degrades in a couple of hours at room temp. And no, there was nothing simpler.

[@embryophytelove]

James Tour fanboy.

[@edgein8632]

@@embryophytelove Funny, anther uneducated dum dum making a claim David

[@Phrenotopia]

@edgein8632 That makes no sense. If this oddly specific number of genes really were the minimum viable form of life or precursor to it, which is doubtful to the extreme, how on Earth could this have come about?

[@edgein8632]

@@Phrenotopia Did you not bother to even try to look up 473 genes? It’s been established in a lab. The whole point is there had to be creation since there is no way hundreds of functional genes randomly a formed in the same place to build and run a cell. All 473 genes have to be there, not 472 or nothing happens.

[@engineersteveo9886]

There doesn’t need to be a common origin

[@kurtn4819]

Just don't bring back any Martian viruses please.

[@aracoixo3288]

XXX

[@nojuice457]

😆

[@baraskparas9559]

LUCA is an erroneous construct that represents the convergence in the evolution of the genetic code and the ribosome . Life was greatly varied from the start. The simplest biotic cells with genes had only 50 or so protein coding genes plus ribozymes and organic- inorganic catalysts A new book published by Austin Macauley Publishers titled From Chemistry to Life on Earth outlines abiogenesis in great detail with a solution to the evolution of the genetic code and the ribosome as well as the cell in general using 290 references, 50 illustrations and several information tables with a proposed molecular natural selection formula with a worked example for ATP. Cheap as an e book.

[@Phrenotopia]

Sounds interesting enough and I'll check it out, but I don't immediately see how these findings contradict the LUCA. I mean, life had to had have a LAST universal common ancestor at a certain level of complexity now, didn't it? You seem to be more talking about FUCA. the earliest one.

[@baraskparas9559]

@@Phrenotopia None of us can prove anything going back that far but From.....Life on Earth has a thorough scenario that outlines the chemistry and physics that allows one to progress to the next stage. The book has a novel definition of life similar to NASAs but different and takes the scenario through to the protozoa and multicellularity. FUCA is just as erroneous as LUCA because the variety of cell biochemistry and genetics in each cell must have been so great as to make it many different entities and not a common ancestor. The scenario claims, with referenced evidence from NASA, Battistuti et al, that archaea and bacteria were 2 separate origins of life based on cell membrane lipid differences.

[@whoff59]

Cell membrane lipids being different between archaea and bacteria and LUCA being predecessor of them can mean different things: a) LUCA and bacteria had the same cell membranes as archaea and they were exchanged somehow later on ... or the other way around. Or, b) perhaps LUCA not yet had cell membrans. Perhaps cell membrans evolved later on independantly in archaea and bacteria and LUCA existed still in an environment of bubbles of minerals whithout own cell membranes... white smokers do have sth. like that I remember. Anyway, cell membranes must have developped like any part of the cell from rather simple origins. I find b) fascinating because it points more to the origins ... 😊

[@whoff59]

​@@baraskparas9559 Archaea and Bacteria have many differences, yeah, to assume a First Universal Common Archeum and a First Universal Common Bacterium ... And they have enough things in common to assume an ancestor of both which we ca call LUCA.

[@baraskparas9559]

@@whoff59 That's just something ignorant people say.

[@PoorMansChemist]

Life cannot exist on Venus but it should exist in the deep sub-surface of Mars.

[@MS-od7je]

For the record: Genesis 1:6 gives the precise conditions. No other planet in our solar system had those specific conditions.

[@Phrenotopia]

A dome separating waters from waters? 😂

[@MS-od7je]

@@Phrenotopia the highest form of language is pragmatic. Not literal. Read it like someone wrote it to you knowing that they know exactly what you know. Don’t read it like a Bronze Age Bedouin.