The Last Universal Common Ancestor of Ribosome-Encoding Organisms: Portrait of LUCA

• Published in: Journal of molecular evolution Vol. 92; no. 5; pp. 550 - 583
• Main Author: Forterre, Patrick
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.10.2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animal Genetics and Genomics; Archaea; Archaea - genetics; ATP synthase; Biological Evolution; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biosphere; Cell Biology; Cell division; Debates; Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; DNA viruses; Eukarya; Eukaryota - genetics; Evolution, Molecular; Evolutionary Biology; Genomes; Hyperthermophiles; Life Sciences; Microbiology; Organisms; Phylogeny; Plant Genetics and Genomics; Plant Sciences; Proteomes; Reverse gyrase; Review; Ribonucleic acid; Ribosomes - genetics; Ribosomes - metabolism; RNA; RNA viruses; Taxonomy; Viruses; LUCA; Universal tree of life; RNA world; Virus origin

The existence of LUCA in the distant past is the logical consequence of the binary mechanism of cell division. The biosphere in which LUCA and contemporaries were living was the product of a long cellular evolution from the origin of life to the second age of the RNA world. A parsimonious scenario s...