Departamento de Ingeniería Genética, Cinvestav Unidad Irapuato, Km 9.6 Libramiento Norte Carretera Irapuato-León CP. 36824, Irapuato, Gto., Mexico.
J Mol Evol. 2024 Oct;92(5):584-592. doi: 10.1007/s00239-024-10187-8. Epub 2024 Jul 18.
The ultimate consequence of Darwin's theory of common descent implies that all life on earth descends ultimately from a common ancestor. Biochemistry and molecular biology now provide sufficient evidence of shared ancestry of all extant life forms. However, the nature of the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) has been a topic of much debate over the years. This review offers a historical perspective on different attempts to infer LUCA's nature, exploring the debate surrounding its complexity. We further examine how different methodologies identify sets of ancient protein that exhibit only partial overlap. For example, different bioinformatic approaches have identified distinct protein subunits from the ATP synthetase identified as potentially inherited from LUCA. Additionally, we discuss how detailed molecular evolutionary analysis of reverse gyrase has modified previous inferences about an hyperthermophilic LUCA based mainly on automatic bioinformatic pipelines. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of developing a database dedicated to studying genes and proteins traceable back to LUCA and earlier stages of cellular evolution. Such a database would house the most ancient genes on earth.
达尔文共同由来论的最终结果意味着地球上所有的生命都最终源自一个共同的祖先。生物化学和分子生物学现在提供了充分的证据，证明所有现存生命形式都有共同的祖先。然而，最后普遍共同祖先（LUCA）的性质多年来一直是一个争论的话题。这篇综述提供了对不同推断 LUCA 性质的尝试的历史视角，探讨了围绕其复杂性的争论。我们进一步研究了不同方法如何识别仅部分重叠的古老蛋白质集。例如，不同的生物信息学方法已经从 ATP 合酶中鉴定出不同的蛋白质亚基，这些亚基可能是从 LUCA 遗传下来的。此外，我们还讨论了详细的分子进化分析如何修改了以前主要基于自动生物信息学管道的关于 LUCA 是嗜热的推断。最后，我们强调了开发一个专门用于研究可追溯到 LUCA 和细胞进化早期阶段的基因和蛋白质的数据库的重要性。这样的数据库将包含地球上最古老的基因。
