Global Mind Share, 878 W Ocean View Ave., Norfolk, VA, 23503, USA.
Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory & Aquarium, 222 Clark Drive, Panacea, FL, 32346, USA; C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth & Development, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Wayne State University, 275 E. Hancock, Detroit, MI, 48201, USA.
Biosystems. 2021 Jul;205:104415. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2021.104415. Epub 2021 Apr 1.
It is puzzling why life on Earth consisted of prokaryotes for up to 2.5 ± 0.5 billion years (Gy) before the appearance of the first eukaryotes. This period, from LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) to LECA (Last Eucaryotic Common Ancestor), we have named the Lucacene, to suggest all prokaryotic descendants of LUCA before the appearance of LECA. Here we present a simple model based on horizontal gene transfer (HGT). It is the process of HGT from Bacteria to Archaea and its reverse that we wish to simulate and estimate its duration until eukaryogenesis. Rough quantitation of its parameters shows that the model may explain the long duration of the Lucacene.
令人费解的是，为什么在第一批真核生物出现之前，地球上的生命长达 25 亿至 2.5 亿年（Gy）之久，一直由原核生物组成。从 LUCA（最后普遍共同祖先）到 LECA（最后真核生物共同祖先），我们将这段时期命名为 Lucacene，以表示 LUCA 出现之前所有原核生物的后代。在这里，我们提出了一个基于水平基因转移（HGT）的简单模型。我们希望模拟和估计从细菌到古菌的 HGT 及其逆转的过程，并估计其持续时间直到真核生物的出现。对其参数的粗略定量表明，该模型可能解释了 Lucacene 的漫长持续时间。
