Jonathan Lambert

If you keep tracing any path of ancestry back far enough, whether you start with gorillas or sharks or ginkgo trees or those neat bacteria that live in the bowels of the earth, you'll eventually reach the same single point. That's Luca. That's the ancestor of every living thing and every dead thing that we know about.

Scientists want to understand what it was like because it gets at this really fundamental question of where we, as in all life on Earth, came from. And here's a new development. A team of scientists took the biggest swing yet at trying to paint a picture of Luca through some pretty tricky detective work.

Scientists want to understand what it was like because it gets at this really fundamental question of where we, as in all life on Earth, came from. And here's a new development. A team of scientists took the biggest swing yet at trying to paint a picture of Luca through some pretty tricky detective work.

Scientists want to understand what it was like because it gets at this really fundamental question of where we, as in all life on Earth, came from. And here's a new development. A team of scientists took the biggest swing yet at trying to paint a picture of Luca through some pretty tricky detective work.

how it could be a bit older and more complicated than we thought, and if true, could hint that we're not the only life in the universe.

how it could be a bit older and more complicated than we thought, and if true, could hint that we're not the only life in the universe.

how it could be a bit older and more complicated than we thought, and if true, could hint that we're not the only life in the universe.

Evidence that it existed is hidden in every living thing. So we all share some basic fundamental machinery of life, things like a genetic code or using amino acids to build proteins.

Evidence that it existed is hidden in every living thing. So we all share some basic fundamental machinery of life, things like a genetic code or using amino acids to build proteins.

Evidence that it existed is hidden in every living thing. So we all share some basic fundamental machinery of life, things like a genetic code or using amino acids to build proteins.

Yeah, yeah, not that. And given what we know about how evolution works, that genes get passed down from generation to generation, it follows that something like LUCA must have existed.

Yeah, yeah, not that. And given what we know about how evolution works, that genes get passed down from generation to generation, it follows that something like LUCA must have existed.

Yeah, yeah, not that. And given what we know about how evolution works, that genes get passed down from generation to generation, it follows that something like LUCA must have existed.

No, it's not the origin of life. It's not even the first cell or the first microbe or the first of anything, really. But it is the furthest back that we can push towards the origin of life by looking at what's alive today. Greg Fournier, a biologist at MIT, put it well.

No, it's not the origin of life. It's not even the first cell or the first microbe or the first of anything, really. But it is the furthest back that we can push towards the origin of life by looking at what's alive today. Greg Fournier, a biologist at MIT, put it well.

No, it's not the origin of life. It's not even the first cell or the first microbe or the first of anything, really. But it is the furthest back that we can push towards the origin of life by looking at what's alive today. Greg Fournier, a biologist at MIT, put it well.

Yeah, and understanding the nature of the end of that story can still tell researchers a lot about early evolution.

Yeah, and understanding the nature of the end of that story can still tell researchers a lot about early evolution.

Yeah, and understanding the nature of the end of that story can still tell researchers a lot about early evolution.

So in general, all these efforts try to guess the genes and proteins that Luca had by looking for what's shared across different organisms. Like, for example, if you compare a gene that's basically the same in us and chimps, it's pretty safe to say that we inherited it from our common ancestor. That's the simplest explanation.