This Strange Microbe May Mark One of Life’s Great Leaps (original) (raw)

Science|This Strange Microbe May Mark One of Life’s Great Leaps

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/science/cells-eukaryotes-archaea.html

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An organism living in ocean muck offers clues to the origins of the complex cells of all animals and plants.

A scanning electron microscopy image of Prometheoarchaeum syntrophicum, a microbe scientists found at the bottom of the ocean. It is closely linked to more complex life. Credit...Hiroyuki Imachi, Masaru K. Nobu and JAMSTEC

Jan. 15, 2020

A bizarre tentacled microbe discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean may help explain the origins of complex life on this planet and solve one of the deepest mysteries in biology, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Two billion years ago, simple cells gave rise to far more complex cells. Biologists have struggled for decades to learn how it happened.

Scientists have long known that there must have been predecessors along the evolutionary road. But to judge from the fossil record, complex cells simply appeared out of nowhere.

The new species, called Prometheoarchaeum, turns out to be just such a transitional form, helping to explain the origins of all animals, plants, fungi — and, of course, humans. The research was reported in the journal Nature.

“It’s actually quite cool — it’s going to have a big impact on science,” said Christa Schleper, a microbiologist at the University of Vienna who was not involved in the new study.

Our cells are stuffed with containers. They store DNA in a nucleus, for example, and generate fuel in compartments called mitochondria. They destroy old proteins inside tiny housekeeping machines called lysosomes.

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