Betül Kaçar

It's quite lazy.

It fixes the problem that seems to be the most immediate, and it doesn't go beyond what it really needs to.

It seems like at least for our experimental setup, that was the case.

I would say that we definitely constrain the environment.

It's definitely removed from their natural setup.

We are not evolving them in a gut.

It's a very homogeneous system, very controlled temperature, controlled food, controlled carbon.

How is a very difficult question, especially when we don't understand the past with clarity at all.

I can tell you that there seems to be very critical innovations that happened throughout the history of life that are each themselves very sophisticated singularities that emerged once and then they set the tone.

One of which is emergence of translation.

It's

Seems like it happened once.

It had to happen once.

Seems like that's all it took.

3.8 billion years, maybe older.

Clearly subjected to a lot of chemical evolution even prior to the last universal common ancestor.

And then you jump and you see emergence of

cyanobacteria that undeniably changed the course of this planet in the subsequent aerobic photosynthesis that life learned how to utilize what's available in the environment in the most profound way.

And then you move forward, you see the emergence of eukaryotes, endosymbiosis, also another singular event.

And then you move forward and then comes the plants.