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

IF 2.1 3区 生物学 Q4 BIOCHEMISTRY & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Journal of Molecular Evolution Pub Date : 2024-10-01 Epub Date: 2024-08-19 DOI:10.1007/s00239-024-10186-9
Patrick Forterre
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Abstract

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 suggests that the molecular fabric of LUCA was much simpler than those of modern organisms, explaining why the evolutionary tempo was faster at the time of LUCA than it was during the diversification of the three domains. Although LUCA was possibly equipped with a RNA genome and most likely lacked an ATP synthase, it was already able to perform basic metabolic functions and to produce efficient proteins. However, the proteome of LUCA and its inferred metabolism remains to be correctly explored by in-depth phylogenomic analyses and updated datasets. LUCA was probably a mesophile or a moderate thermophile since phylogenetic analyses indicate that it lacked reverse gyrase, an enzyme systematically present in all hyperthermophiles. The debate about the position of Eukarya in the tree of life, either sister group to Archaea or descendants of Archaea, has important implications to draw the portrait of LUCA. In the second alternative, one can a priori exclude the presence of specific eukaryotic features in LUCA. In contrast, if Archaea and Eukarya are sister group, some eukaryotic features, such as the spliceosome, might have been present in LUCA and later lost in Archaea and Bacteria. The nature of the LUCA virome is another matter of debate. I suggest here that DNA viruses only originated during the diversification of the three domains from an RNA-based LUCA to explain the odd distribution pattern of DNA viruses in the tree of life.

Abstract Image

核糖体编码生物的最后一个普遍共同祖先:LUCA 的肖像
远古时代 LUCA 的存在是细胞分裂二元机制的必然结果。从生命起源到第二个 RNA 世界时代,LUCA 和同时代生物所生活的生物圈是漫长的细胞进化的产物。一个合理的假设是,LUCA 的分子结构要比现代生物的分子结构简单得多,这就解释了为什么 LUCA 时期的进化速度要比三大领域多样化时期的进化速度快。虽然 LUCA 可能只有 RNA 基因组,而且很可能缺乏 ATP 合成酶,但它已经能够执行基本的新陈代谢功能并产生高效蛋白质。然而,LUCA 的蛋白质组及其推断的新陈代谢仍有待于通过深入的系统发生组分析和更新的数据集进行正确的探索。LUCA很可能是一种嗜中性或中度嗜热菌,因为系统发生学分析表明它缺乏反向回旋酶,而所有嗜热菌都系统地存在这种酶。关于真核生物在生命树中的位置,是古细菌的姊妹群还是古细菌的后代的争论,对绘制 LUCA 的肖像具有重要影响。在第二种选择中,我们可以先验地排除 LUCA 中存在特定真核特征的可能性。相反,如果古细菌和真核生物是姊妹群,那么某些真核生物特征(如剪接体)可能曾出现在 LUCA 中,但后来在古细菌和细菌中消失了。LUCA病毒体的性质是另一个有争议的问题。我在这里提出,DNA病毒只起源于以RNA为基础的LUCA的三个领域的分化过程,以解释DNA病毒在生命树中的奇特分布模式。
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来源期刊
Journal of Molecular Evolution
Journal of Molecular Evolution 生物-进化生物学
CiteScore
5.50
自引率
2.60%
发文量
36
审稿时长
3 months
期刊介绍: Journal of Molecular Evolution covers experimental, computational, and theoretical work aimed at deciphering features of molecular evolution and the processes bearing on these features, from the initial formation of macromolecular systems through their evolution at the molecular level, the co-evolution of their functions in cellular and organismal systems, and their influence on organismal adaptation, speciation, and ecology. Topics addressed include the evolution of informational macromolecules and their relation to more complex levels of biological organization, including populations and taxa, as well as the molecular basis for the evolution of ecological interactions of species and the use of molecular data to infer fundamental processes in evolutionary ecology. This coverage accommodates such subfields as new genome sequences, comparative structural and functional genomics, population genetics, the molecular evolution of development, the evolution of gene regulation and gene interaction networks, and in vitro evolution of DNA and RNA, molecular evolutionary ecology, and the development of methods and theory that enable molecular evolutionary inference, including but not limited to, phylogenetic methods.
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