Tracing the Ancestry of Complex Life to a Common Origin

A new study published in the journal Nature has found that all complex life forms, including humans, trace their roots back to a common ancestor among a group of microbes called the Asgard archaea. The research team identified the closest microbial relative to all complex life forms on the tree of life as a newly described order called the Hodarchaeales. The Asgard archaea evolved more than 2 billion years ago, and their descendants are still living. The study expands the known Asgard genomic diversity, adding more than 50 undescribed Asgard genomes as input for their modeling.