All articles tagged with #eukaryogenesis
The article uses molecular clock analyses of gene duplications to establish a timeline for eukaryotic cell evolution, suggesting that key features like the nucleus, cytoskeleton, and endomembrane system developed before mitochondrial endosymbiosis, with the divergence of eukaryotic lineages occurring around 1.8 billion years ago.
The study of Asgard archaea, a group of microbes that may be the closest living relatives of eukaryotes, is shedding light on the origins of complex life. Researchers have cultivated two species of Loki, a type of Asgard archaea, and found that they have tentacle-like filaments made of a protein called Lokiactin, which closely resembles the actin used by eukaryotic cells to build supportive cytoskeletons. This adds plausibility to the inside-out model of eukaryogenesis, which proposes that the first eukaryotes were born after a simple ancestral cell extended protrusions past its cell walls and closed around a symbiotic bacterium, turning it into a proto-mitochondrion.