Pre-Darwinian Evolution Before LUCA (original) (raw)
Abstract
If the coming of the last universal cellular ancestor (LUCA) marks the crossing of the “Darwinian Threshold” (Woese in Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99:8742–8747, 2002), pre-LUCA evolution must have been pre-Darwinian. But how did pre-Darwinian evolution actually operate? Bringing together and extending insights from both earlier and more recent contributions, this essay advances three principal arguments regarding the pre-Darwinian evolution. First, in the pre-Darwinian epoch, survival essentially meant persistence within the prebiotic system, and it depended mostly on chemical variation and interaction. Second, selection operated upon four different properties: chemical; chemical-physical; vesicles’ capacities in absorbing, engulfing, and merging; and protocells’ coupling of metabolism, replication, and division. Third, division evolved from a state without tight coupling of replication with division to a state of tight coupling. Eventually, protocells with a tight coupling of replication with division became the First Universal Cellular Ancestors (FUCAs) and then LUCA.
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Notes
- For a discussion regarding the exact nature of LUCA, see Cornish-Bowden and Cárdenas (2017).
- The “two primary domains” thesis after LUCA is now a near consensus (e.g., Lombard et al. 2012; Koonin 2014a; López-García and Moreira 2015; Williams et al. 2015; Spang et al. 2015; Dacks et al. 2016; Eme et al. 2017).
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Acknowledgements
For insightful comments and suggestions, I thank Bruce Damer, David Deamer, and Eugene Koonin. Jin He, Chang-an Liu, and Yue Tian provided outstanding research assistance.
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- School of International Relations and Public Affairs (SIRPA), Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Shiping Tang
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Correspondence toShiping Tang.
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Tang, S. Pre-Darwinian Evolution Before LUCA.Biol Theory 15, 175–179 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-020-00359-2
- Received: 05 March 2020
- Accepted: 12 July 2020
- Published: 26 August 2020
- Version of record: 26 August 2020
- Issue date: December 2020
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-020-00359-2