"My Name is Luca... I lived 3 billion years ago

[Ichingcarpenter]

ONCE upon a time, 3 billion years ago, there lived a single organism called LUCA. It was enormous: a mega-organism like none seen since, it filled the planet's oceans before splitting into three and giving birth to the ancestors of all living things on Earth today.

This strange picture is emerging from efforts to pin down the last universal common ancestor - not the first life that emerged on Earth but the life form that gave rise to all others.

The latest results suggest LUCA was the result of early life's fight to survive, attempts at which turned the ocean into a global genetic swap shop for hundreds of millions of years. Cells struggling to survive on their own exchanged useful parts with each other without competition - effectively creating a global mega-organism.

It was around 2.9 billion years ago that LUCA split into the three domains of life: the single-celled bacteria and archaea, and the more complex eukaryotes that gave rise to animals and plants (see timeline). It's hard to know what happened before the split. Hardly any fossil evidence remains from this time, and any genes that date that far back are likely to have mutated beyond recognition.


SNIP.......


http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228404.300-life-began-with-a-planetary-megaorganism.html

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. The mother in law of all life had a split personality? Well,,

That explains a lot about this world. Not to quibble, how do you fit three billion into 7000 years?

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. .00000233?

Or do I need some more zeros?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. LOL!

[Marnie]

6. What the hell are you talking about

There is no gender involved here.
What she is discussing is pre cell decision, much less the production of gametes.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

10. I wish upon you the gift of humor, although by the looks of things, you will

toss it out with the wrapping.

[bahrbearian]

11. LOL

[Botany]

4. Thanx for posting

:think:

[bluedave]

5. I hear

they are good deepfried:sarcasm:

[hunter]

7. Now known as Gaia, and spinning up for some serious ass kicking.

It was a very bad idea shit in her swimming pool. :scared:

.

.

.

:yoiks:

[Ichingcarpenter]

8. We All came from Luca.... who lives on the second floor.

..... but anyway..

We all came from something that was sexless.
Now, was Luca a boy or girl in the song?

I rest my case.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Luka was a boy

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=3528

(Yeah, I know you didn't mean the question literally ...)

[gristy]

12. This concept of the conglomeration of these single-celled organisms being a "mega-organism"

(whatever that is) is a bit of a stretch.

[jimlup]

13. fascinating stuff

LUCA maybe should be renamed Gia... the great mother of all life.

[Dragonbreathp9d]

14. Hmm- I wonder how this will affect those religious scientists who are trying to prove God's

Existence? They have done some really interesting work. I for one you will never be able to prove or disprove God- but I really like those with a strong believe in God feel that science is a part of that supreme being, not in conflict with it.

[htuttle]

15. They talk about LUCA like it's gone

Every domain of life on this planet is still interacting, exchanging energy (by being eaten, for example), finding new ways to exploit the environment to extract energy (as the LUCA biosystem did) -- seems to me that "LUCA" didn't go anywhere, it just got a lot more complicated than it used to be. It's still all one big system. None of the component organisms are self-sufficient.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

17. interesting view point. It makes sense

[gtar100]

18. That is such an important point. We face the threat of extinction

because we do not respect the dependency we have on our ecosystem.

[Tumbulu]

19. Just what I was thinking- but you said it better

than I could. Thanks, agree.

[RagAss]

21. True...and they talk about time like it exists outside of mind.

It's what they do.

[Odin2005]

16. I disagree with this hypothesis.

IMO the Last Common Ancestor was already a fairly complex bacterium, something like the green sulfur bacteria. Eukaryotes and Archaea evolved from something similar to the plactomycete bacteria, many of which have nucleus-like structures and an actin cytoskeleton.

[pscot]

20. Chris Moore wrote a novel about Luca

It's called Fluke.

[Orrex]

22. Ia! Ubbo-Sathla! The unbegotten source!

Ia! Ia!

[Codeine]

23. That is not dead which can eternal lie. . . nt