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Jul 13, 2024

Metabolism, genome and age of the last universal common ancestor

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Through analysis of gene families that were duplicated before the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), we estimate the date of the LUCA at approximately 4.2 billion years ago. Our reconstruction of the genome of the LUCA contains around 2,500 protein-encoding genes across 2.5 megabases, and we suggest that the LUCA was a complex anaerobic acetogen that lived within a pre-existing ecosystem.

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