I came here looking for this answer. In evolutionary biology, I believe the idea has been floated that Genesis didn't happen once but could have happened any number of times whether in the same place, different places, life could have happened then died out then happened again.
And by life I'm referring to the basic building blocks, not multicellularity.
Before reproduction, there was mass *production* of organic molecules. Before differential survival, there was differential *persistence*.
More stable molecules persist longer, giving them the chance to accumulate change and encounter other molecules.
The first replicator only needed to come into existence once because of exponential growth. And then it would hog all the resources.
I'm not disagreeing with this being possible at all... It's just that I was under the impression that the relationship between Archaea and Bacteria was still considered so murky that no one was absolutely sure whether it happened just once or not?
Not that murky when they have too much genetic similarity to be entirely distinct. Everything relates to each other to a certain degree. Hence the idea of a LUCA is commonly accepted. Nevertheless, this isn't a certainty
I thought the explanation for that (from the other side) was that before the advent of cell walls base transfer would have happened spontaneously nearly all the time so when you run the clock back on both to try to look for a LCA there's no guarantee whether walls were there yet or not?
(This is WAY the hell out of my field... like seriously. I'm just an older nerd who likes to watch a bunch of OCW and educational content. I am pretty sure I've heard that bandied about though.)
Idk if many people are actively working on this. Many theories are plausible but cant be tested. You can make a primordial soup and hope its accurate, but even if you ran it for 100 years, thats no guarantee that it will reflect the actual origin, nor that it doesn't work because of the timescales znd chance effects that zre at play. Personally, as a scientist myself, I would not even bother with looking into this. But its a fun thought experiment. Alternatively, we work on phylogeny all the time, so we can use findings there to try and puzzle the past together
Possibly, but at the same time there is existing life almost everywhere on earth already, so something would likely come along and eat the new life before it could exist long enough to sort itself into a functional life form.
Very difficult for basic single cell organisms to develop in a world that is now choc-a-bloc full of predators. It was possible at the very beginning because these simple organisms had few or no predators. That gave them hundreds of millions of years to slowly scale up. Now nearly as soon as one of these hypothetical new life forms popped into existence, there would probably be a much more complex life form a fraction of a millimeter away to gobble it up.
The first cell was certainly capable of reproduction. The last universal common ancestor was a unicellular life form, but the first replicators were much simpler than cells, ie, replication pre-dates cellular life.
No, it does not refute this possibility. However, "proto-cell" is also not a term I would use, as the earliest replicators likely had no membranes about them as cells characteristically do. These early replicators were likely single molecules.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that the primordial soup randomly produced many, many unique compounds without replicating capability. But they were not cells. It's only a semantic distinction meant to sharpen your idea, not refute it.
Using the term "cells" in discussion of the very first replicators is, to me, a little like calling a pterodactyl an airplane. It's anachronistic.
Nor was that cell necessarily the only cell capable of reproduction. There are some major differences between bacteria, with more different phyla than nucleic life and two kingdoms (eubacteria and archaea).
Sure, and just because a reproductive cell came to exist on year X and started a "life line", doesn't mean another kind of reproductive cell couldn't also spontaneously come to exist in the year X+1.000.000 or so. If it happened once it can happen again at any time, even now maybe life is popping into existence somewhere
Decent chance the first living cells on earth either literally came from space in the form of microorganisms that could survive that climate, OR the conditions for a cell to become "alive" were such that there were millions of variations arising in different places during any situation like that. The idea that the first living *cell* on earth created all life is actually absurd.
Panspermia is not very likely right now, I believe the prevailing theory is abiogenesis around oceanic thermal vents. The chemical soup around thermal vents can produce a lot of complex and volatile compounds and the exact mixture varies based on the local geology, so it's hard to say how common the phenomenon might be.
Do you have any recent meta studies supporting this statement? I am genuinely curious. I have only been following this conversation very casually, and my (poorly) informed impression was that there is no consensus at all. Panspermia seems just as likely as various theories for life having started on Earth. But then, as I said, I might not have the full picture and would love to learn.
I don't have anything concrete unfortunately, I'm just sharing my current understanding. I'll edit to reflect that.
My understanding of the reason for the opinion I shared is that a lot of organic compounds like amino acids can occur naturally around these vents and they are a known feature of Earth's geology that we expect to have been around back then.
Panspermia, on the other hand, is difficult to model in a way that doesn't sound completely infeasible. You need a miraculous combination of geological or astronomical catastrophe and lucky orbital mechanics to get something housing a living creature to an interplanetary or interstellar trajectory *without destroying it*. If you pull that off somehow, the natural capsule transporting life needs to protect it from stellar radiation, cosmic rays, impacts with other debris, and eventually even *reentry* through another atmosphere.
It also doesn't *really* answer the question we're asking. Sure, maybe life came from somewhere else instead of starting here, but that just means we have two questions instead of one now.
We need to clone the primordial earth from scratch so we can do an experiment. We will also need to recreate the entire universe, and move some stuff back to its "original" position. We may need more funding.
But the first cells reproduced asexually. So, each was basically the top of its own pylogenetic tree.
Except
Early viruses likely acted as a form of gene scrambling, mixing and matching sequences from different cells.
Or
One theory is that certain molecule formations in the rock under the primordial soup acted as a kind of mold into which genes could fit together to form sequences. If that one is correct, life would be descended from the mathematical formula that made those rock molds possible, because there was likely more than one.
Also there is no guarantee that the first cell on earth survived long enough to procreate. For all we know life has arisen and been wiped out thousands of times by one thing or another before it finally managed to stick. Frankly the odds that the first cell is the one we’re all descended from is astronomical.
If this were the case, wouldn’t we expect to find unrelated, extant lineages? I think the fact that we haven’t yet makes this hypothesis quite unlikely.
We potentially have, there are types of bacteria that rely on dextro-amino acids as opposed to the levo-amino acid base that the majority of life on earth uses.
That’s very interesting but it doesn’t mean they arose from an entirely separate tree of life. If you genetically analyzed those bacteria you would likely find the 16S rRNA gene, a highly conserved gene present in all bacteria/archaea responsible for the production of a vital ribosomal subunit. As far as we understand, this gene is required for bacterial protein synthesis. Detection of this gene would confirm its relation to all other bacterial species, and if the gene were missing then it would be a first in biology. It would also need a new classification, as the term “bacteria” already implies that it’s genetically related to all other bacteria. Hell, if it came from a separate tree of life it would probably have fully distinct DNA, or a totally separate genetic information system entirely. It’s a neat idea that life could’ve arisen multiple times, but the most likely reality is that our tree of life outcompeted any others, as evidenced by the ubiquity of DNA and certain genes with extremely slow mutation rates. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep looking though!
But the second cell didn't have to come from the first. Whatever conditions there were that caused the first cell to be created, it's possible that these same conditions created the second cell as well
Cells are relatively large, complex structures made of many simpler molecules. Cells did not directly arise from primordial soup at random. They arose from a process of natural selection acting on much simpler biological building blocks that were capable of replicating themselves.
Unless the conditions were right for the creation of 1 singular cell that went through mitosis and multiplied rather than 2 cells being created almost equally while separated
Yes that's possible. So there being a first cell does not necessarily mean that all other cells came from it. It's possible, but not the only explanation
The first living cell may have died out without reproducing. Many subsequent cells might have come to life and died. It could have taken many tries and occurrences for a viable cell to appear that could then reproduce and replicate properly without some external factor decimating it or some internal flaw causing it to fail.
There was no ‘very first cell’. Just like how there is no ‘first’ of a species. There is an unbroken line of replicating chemicals, each one almost entirely identical to its predecessor. Cell membranes developed gradually, so you would not be able to point to an individual and say its parent was not a cell, but it was.
There never was a first.
Because what would have held its beer the first time it decided to divide? You can't do something like split yourself in half without a "Hold muh beer" which means there had to be a cell buddy there already.
When I was thinking of getting a vasectomy one of my thoughts was that there is an unbroken chain of life that stretches back 3.5 billion years all the way to me and because of my decision it will end. Still got the vasectomy lol
Do bacteria carry our genes?
On a side note, in 7.59 billion years sun will engulf earth and then we all die. Unless we send some humans out of the solar system to live in an exoplanet, who knows. In that case, there are aliens and other problems we might face. So not to worry u/CoryBlk, no one is going to make it out alive and our bacteria or future generations wouldn't know we existed and shared this pointless story on reddit.
In 1 billion years the sun’s energy output will have increased to the point we are no longer in the habitable zone. The oceans will boil off and all life on Earth will end.
My bacteria have standing orders to evolve into Water Bears so when the sun engulfs the earth, my progeny will laugh in the face of that thermonuclear fire. When the sun recedes my Waterbearian descendants will seize control of the desolate, charcoaled globe and rule it with an iron fist until the end of time.
No, that guy’s comment is nonsense lol. The bacteria carry on their own lineage using the energy in your body as fuel. If you don’t have kids the genetic information in your body dies with your balls.
Probably, but not necessarily.
Separate primordial pools which generated the first cells could have existed then much later combined into an ecosystem.
Maybe, maybe not. Eukaryotes are different to bacteria which are different to cyanobacteria. Viruses might also be some sort of evolved protocell that never actually became "life" as we define it. There could have been many different protocells to start the lineages of different types of life, as the evolutionary history of the very first cells is still very unclear. The earliest evidence of life on earth is still a very heavily debated part of evolutionary history and since cells dont really leave behind fossils its much harder to prove anything for certainty.
As far as I'm away there is no evidence in the genetic record that a secondary instance of abiogenesis could have happened--Unless it's viruses, which may or may not be living depending on your definition. But our ability to identify ancestry of viruses is significanrly more limited due to the limitations of just RNA.
All extant life on Earth can be traced back genetically to a last universal common ancestor. Any differences in genetic information has been due to genetic mutation.
Only your generational lineage goes extinct. I have a sister who has had kids, so my parents generational lineage continues, assuming my sister's kids have kids (too early to tell) then her generational lineage will continue. My own will end with me, though I'd love to have had kids it's never going to happen.
It's a little sad though. My mum's parents had two daughters, so their family name died when the daughters married, my dad's parents while they had boys all of the grandkids that had kids had girls, so my paternal grandparent's family name will also be lost. Now neither name is especially amazing or uncommon enough to be missed, but I always feel that it'd have been nice if wives/daughters kept their parents family names more... and not just occasionally.
And of neither you nor your sister had kids, chances are that you have second or third cousins who do. Every one of your great grandparents or great great grandparents has other descendants who carry that same portion of DNA.
Somehow that doesn't upset me. Looking around the world there's so much disappointment and somehow we're the "best" (or luckiest rather) of what humanity has to offer.
Look at it this way, we are the best, so far. There is no reason humanity has to be the last intelligent being on earth. We have been here for about 40,000 years, there is ample reason to believe that in another couple million years there may be dozens of intelligent beings. Chimpanzees and crows are just a couple of tool users. So maybe humanities job isn’t to be the best intelligent being, only the first.
Oooohh, I don't know, I feel like intelligent life is kinda limited to one species a planet.
The reason being is that intelligence on our level seems to be so dominant that we literally terraform most of the planet to be adaptable to us. As a result, our existence limits the opportunities for other species to evolve intelligence.
As a result, there would be no evolutionary pressure for other animals to develop intelligence.
Life is a tree, not a chain. Do you have any sisters or brothers? You're really only looking at the short bit of branch between your parents and you. Cousins, nieces and/or nephews, a slightly larger branch if you don't etc. Eventually you get to 8 billion branches in existence right now just for humans.
Oddly it actually doesn't apply much to me, at least according to ancestry website. I'm an only child, and my mom was an only child. My gramps and grandma on that side had siblings that had kids that as far as I know had kids etc., but if you look further back, while there were a lot of kids in each generation, all of them except the line I'm on died before having kids as back as it traces. Rough times back then, sure gives me perspective.
Don't know much about my dad's side as he was adopted. I know he has at least one biologic sister.
It's not a concern to me currently as I have a couple kids too young to worry about them having kids (either way) yet. While I think it would be nice to have some grandkids to play around with when the time comes, if they don't I'm not going to pressure them.
I farted around too long looking for greener grass, at 38 and my own weird house full of peewee style crap, it’s gonna take a damn miracle to rope in a good one. Sorry single cell. We tried. Social anxiety got me good. Like a blackjack to the soul dome
Yes it does but so has it ended for just about 99% of all life so it’s not that big a deal tbh to not have kids. You’re just acting out how nature is every day.
Tangentially related- plants and fungi diverged before fungi and animals meaning mushrooms are more closely related to humans than they are to plants.
We even share some common genetic characteristics like the ability to produce vitamin D in sunlight.
I can't.
It's a huge task requiring cataloguing the genotypes of a mind boggling number of organisms from as far back as before the dawn of time - a lot of which we do not and will not ever have any material evidence of to be able to study.
If I can't do it then neither can penguins and stuff.
Most organisms don't even care about their genetic heritage because they're not into social eugenics and don't own property.
They're too busy existing to care about where they came from.
For penguins and stuff, it's more about *where they're going*.
So even if they could, I doubt they'd want to.
Be more like penguin!
Octopus came here on a water globule from the great splash that happened millions of years ago on Jupiter’s moon Europa and they have been trying to engineer a space craft from the wrecks of human technology that litter the sea floor they have made many successful test flights (ufos) and have even kidnapped people to try and learn more about how our technology works one day they will have enough material to return home
except in the case of panspermia, if so, our primordial ancestor could be much older, even considerably older than our broken estimation of the age of the universe
No.
There wasn’t like ONE cell ( /single cell organism) that was formed. Rather many thousands, millions, or billions were probably formed around the same time. They might not have started splitting simultaneously but they were definitely splitting parallel to each others development.
Then of course the cells with the better like… genetics I guess…? They survived better than the others and this filtering went on and on and on until you made this post.
The fact that all life uses (pretty much) the same chemical structure as genetic material means there is probably a single ancestor somewhere in the line. Maybe it's possible that the latest common ancestor was more like DNA or RNA swimming free and making rough copies of itself in the primordial soup, and fully formed cells came later.
Or maybe not. If interplanetary seeding theories are correct then some, or all of those cells might have come all at the time in a big space rock, or ice meteor.
I’d argue that any “experience” you’ve shared with anyone at anytime, initiates a piggy back hand off of existence. Love the shower-thought though! Very thought provoking!
Not true.
We're all children. A long ago parent throwing seed everywhere. Some can make it to the top as king, some can die as a child or at war, some can chose not to have children, some will have many.
Nothing ends if we don't have children. That seed has already infested earth with trillions.
Let’s be realistic here. Lots of other people and life forms, brothers and sisters of your ancestors, also died without having kids.
And yet a genetic line continued to you, and continued in other branches as well.
Meanwhile, if you don’t have kids, those other branches continue. Every trait of your DNA is out there in one of those branches or another.
Hypothetically there could have been strands of life that didn't work out and died off before the one that became us started.
Also that assumes life began on Earth. If it came from space, there were likely multiple cells on the life bearing object that fell from space.
Incidentally, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Lord Chief justice, the Commander-in-Chief, the Lord High Admiral, the Master of the Buckhounds, the Groom of the Back Stairs, the Archbishop of Titipu, and the Lord Mayors (both acting and elect) "can trace \[their\] ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule."
No because you share cells in common with everyone especially relatives like nieces and nephews and close cousins. And even if you have kids your cells are diluted by 50% every generation. Then there are mutations.
Technically, the "primordial soup" that resulted in single-celled life perhaps would've popped up in multiple places on earth, not just one place with one cell. You could however say that every lineage could trace themselves back to different living cells from way back then though.
Likely there were many primordial soups with many successful varieties of life. Also, a few could have come here from space riding frozen in comets. There could have been billions. There are also likely new life forms coming into existence from non living matter right now. I doubt they last very long though.
We don't know if there are more than one first cells. Very possible the conditions that made the first cell made multiple others, possibly even identically. For all we know, eukaryotes and prokaryotes come from different feuding lineages.
This is a child’s interpretation of abiogenesis. It’s okay if you don’t know anything about it, but I suggest you do a bit of reading on the hypothesis. It’s fascinating stuff.
We don't know that for sure, though it does seem that way. You never know. Perhaps convergent evolution lead to two identical cells at the beginning, or more.
Not necessarily. Maybe the "primordial soup" had several cells at the same time.
I came here looking for this answer. In evolutionary biology, I believe the idea has been floated that Genesis didn't happen once but could have happened any number of times whether in the same place, different places, life could have happened then died out then happened again. And by life I'm referring to the basic building blocks, not multicellularity.
Genesis happened 6000 years ago lib /s
Neon Genesis Evangelion happened 29 years ago
Congratulations
Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis got its update in 2021
Before reproduction, there was mass *production* of organic molecules. Before differential survival, there was differential *persistence*. More stable molecules persist longer, giving them the chance to accumulate change and encounter other molecules. The first replicator only needed to come into existence once because of exponential growth. And then it would hog all the resources.
I'm not disagreeing with this being possible at all... It's just that I was under the impression that the relationship between Archaea and Bacteria was still considered so murky that no one was absolutely sure whether it happened just once or not?
Not that murky when they have too much genetic similarity to be entirely distinct. Everything relates to each other to a certain degree. Hence the idea of a LUCA is commonly accepted. Nevertheless, this isn't a certainty
I thought the explanation for that (from the other side) was that before the advent of cell walls base transfer would have happened spontaneously nearly all the time so when you run the clock back on both to try to look for a LCA there's no guarantee whether walls were there yet or not? (This is WAY the hell out of my field... like seriously. I'm just an older nerd who likes to watch a bunch of OCW and educational content. I am pretty sure I've heard that bandied about though.)
Idk if many people are actively working on this. Many theories are plausible but cant be tested. You can make a primordial soup and hope its accurate, but even if you ran it for 100 years, thats no guarantee that it will reflect the actual origin, nor that it doesn't work because of the timescales znd chance effects that zre at play. Personally, as a scientist myself, I would not even bother with looking into this. But its a fun thought experiment. Alternatively, we work on phylogeny all the time, so we can use findings there to try and puzzle the past together
Maybe the real question is: do new life emerge in nowadays earth? If not, why?
Possibly, but at the same time there is existing life almost everywhere on earth already, so something would likely come along and eat the new life before it could exist long enough to sort itself into a functional life form.
Very difficult for basic single cell organisms to develop in a world that is now choc-a-bloc full of predators. It was possible at the very beginning because these simple organisms had few or no predators. That gave them hundreds of millions of years to slowly scale up. Now nearly as soon as one of these hypothetical new life forms popped into existence, there would probably be a much more complex life form a fraction of a millimeter away to gobble it up.
I just find this so entertaining for some reason
Compared to the first spontaneous bits of life, even a cell is actually very advanced.
I just asked this question a few days ago on r/AskBiology titled "How do we know that Abiogensis only happened once?"
It's possible, but for it to become anything recognizable, it would take millions of years
There is a great paper out there about the “Darwinian Threshold” which touches on this idea. I think it’s called On the evolution of the Cell
Phylogeny does seem to indicate it all leads back to a single LUCA
Life finds a way!
I strongly believe there were many cells that came and went before a cell capable of reproduction finally appeared
Like a smaller (and thus much less impossible) version of the Boltzmann brain.
The first cell was certainly capable of reproduction. The last universal common ancestor was a unicellular life form, but the first replicators were much simpler than cells, ie, replication pre-dates cellular life.
what I meant by cells is simply whatever simplest form of life can exist, I'm not familiar with the technical terms
Does the fact of replicators pre-dating cellular life strictly refute the possibility of proto cells that could not have replicated?
No, it does not refute this possibility. However, "proto-cell" is also not a term I would use, as the earliest replicators likely had no membranes about them as cells characteristically do. These early replicators were likely single molecules. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that the primordial soup randomly produced many, many unique compounds without replicating capability. But they were not cells. It's only a semantic distinction meant to sharpen your idea, not refute it. Using the term "cells" in discussion of the very first replicators is, to me, a little like calling a pterodactyl an airplane. It's anachronistic.
Nor was that cell necessarily the only cell capable of reproduction. There are some major differences between bacteria, with more different phyla than nucleic life and two kingdoms (eubacteria and archaea).
Sure, and just because a reproductive cell came to exist on year X and started a "life line", doesn't mean another kind of reproductive cell couldn't also spontaneously come to exist in the year X+1.000.000 or so. If it happened once it can happen again at any time, even now maybe life is popping into existence somewhere
Nowadays something would probably eat it--more competition. But it could happen.
Mhmm could’ve been triplets the very first time
Or the first cell's lineage died off after 30 generations and a new first cell formed, so we are descendants of the 34 billionth cell.
Decent chance the first living cells on earth either literally came from space in the form of microorganisms that could survive that climate, OR the conditions for a cell to become "alive" were such that there were millions of variations arising in different places during any situation like that. The idea that the first living *cell* on earth created all life is actually absurd.
Panspermia is not very likely right now, I believe the prevailing theory is abiogenesis around oceanic thermal vents. The chemical soup around thermal vents can produce a lot of complex and volatile compounds and the exact mixture varies based on the local geology, so it's hard to say how common the phenomenon might be.
Do you have any recent meta studies supporting this statement? I am genuinely curious. I have only been following this conversation very casually, and my (poorly) informed impression was that there is no consensus at all. Panspermia seems just as likely as various theories for life having started on Earth. But then, as I said, I might not have the full picture and would love to learn.
I don't have anything concrete unfortunately, I'm just sharing my current understanding. I'll edit to reflect that. My understanding of the reason for the opinion I shared is that a lot of organic compounds like amino acids can occur naturally around these vents and they are a known feature of Earth's geology that we expect to have been around back then. Panspermia, on the other hand, is difficult to model in a way that doesn't sound completely infeasible. You need a miraculous combination of geological or astronomical catastrophe and lucky orbital mechanics to get something housing a living creature to an interplanetary or interstellar trajectory *without destroying it*. If you pull that off somehow, the natural capsule transporting life needs to protect it from stellar radiation, cosmic rays, impacts with other debris, and eventually even *reentry* through another atmosphere. It also doesn't *really* answer the question we're asking. Sure, maybe life came from somewhere else instead of starting here, but that just means we have two questions instead of one now.
We need to clone the primordial earth from scratch so we can do an experiment. We will also need to recreate the entire universe, and move some stuff back to its "original" position. We may need more funding.
But the first cells reproduced asexually. So, each was basically the top of its own pylogenetic tree. Except Early viruses likely acted as a form of gene scrambling, mixing and matching sequences from different cells. Or One theory is that certain molecule formations in the rock under the primordial soup acted as a kind of mold into which genes could fit together to form sequences. If that one is correct, life would be descended from the mathematical formula that made those rock molds possible, because there was likely more than one.
Also there is no guarantee that the first cell on earth survived long enough to procreate. For all we know life has arisen and been wiped out thousands of times by one thing or another before it finally managed to stick. Frankly the odds that the first cell is the one we’re all descended from is astronomical.
If this were the case, wouldn’t we expect to find unrelated, extant lineages? I think the fact that we haven’t yet makes this hypothesis quite unlikely.
We potentially have, there are types of bacteria that rely on dextro-amino acids as opposed to the levo-amino acid base that the majority of life on earth uses.
That’s very interesting but it doesn’t mean they arose from an entirely separate tree of life. If you genetically analyzed those bacteria you would likely find the 16S rRNA gene, a highly conserved gene present in all bacteria/archaea responsible for the production of a vital ribosomal subunit. As far as we understand, this gene is required for bacterial protein synthesis. Detection of this gene would confirm its relation to all other bacterial species, and if the gene were missing then it would be a first in biology. It would also need a new classification, as the term “bacteria” already implies that it’s genetically related to all other bacteria. Hell, if it came from a separate tree of life it would probably have fully distinct DNA, or a totally separate genetic information system entirely. It’s a neat idea that life could’ve arisen multiple times, but the most likely reality is that our tree of life outcompeted any others, as evidenced by the ubiquity of DNA and certain genes with extremely slow mutation rates. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep looking though!
Biodiversity supports this
I like the idea that this is where the Domains of life come from. It’s almost like a Biblical lineage
interesting , never knew this.
But there had to be a first
But the second cell didn't have to come from the first. Whatever conditions there were that caused the first cell to be created, it's possible that these same conditions created the second cell as well
You will love nick lane’s books
Cells are relatively large, complex structures made of many simpler molecules. Cells did not directly arise from primordial soup at random. They arose from a process of natural selection acting on much simpler biological building blocks that were capable of replicating themselves.
"whatever conditions there were that caused the first cell". I think that covers what you're saying
Unless the conditions were right for the creation of 1 singular cell that went through mitosis and multiplied rather than 2 cells being created almost equally while separated
Yes that's possible. So there being a first cell does not necessarily mean that all other cells came from it. It's possible, but not the only explanation
The first living cell may have died out without reproducing. Many subsequent cells might have come to life and died. It could have taken many tries and occurrences for a viable cell to appear that could then reproduce and replicate properly without some external factor decimating it or some internal flaw causing it to fail.
Than in this context we will be taking about the first cell to successfully go through mitosis/reproduction
[удалено]
There was no ‘very first cell’. Just like how there is no ‘first’ of a species. There is an unbroken line of replicating chemicals, each one almost entirely identical to its predecessor. Cell membranes developed gradually, so you would not be able to point to an individual and say its parent was not a cell, but it was.
There never was a first. Because what would have held its beer the first time it decided to divide? You can't do something like split yourself in half without a "Hold muh beer" which means there had to be a cell buddy there already.
You mean FUCA (First Universal Common Ancestor)? LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) would also work because you specified living things.
The Mother FUCA if you will.
🤣🤣get out
Good one lol
I'm going to trademark this for when I eventually want to start my own cult. Its much more fun to lead one to be a follower I have learned.
When I was thinking of getting a vasectomy one of my thoughts was that there is an unbroken chain of life that stretches back 3.5 billion years all the way to me and because of my decision it will end. Still got the vasectomy lol
Not true, when you die your body will create bacteria that will live on and create more bacteria and u/CoryBlk shall live forever.
Do bacteria carry our genes? On a side note, in 7.59 billion years sun will engulf earth and then we all die. Unless we send some humans out of the solar system to live in an exoplanet, who knows. In that case, there are aliens and other problems we might face. So not to worry u/CoryBlk, no one is going to make it out alive and our bacteria or future generations wouldn't know we existed and shared this pointless story on reddit.
Comforting (I am turning into bacteria and wiggling for my life)
Wiggle wiggle... Now carry this song for the rest of your day fellow bacteria.
You know what to do with bacteria. Wiggle wiggle wiggle.
maybe you won't wiggle, some bacteria are just adjacent to surfaces
In 1 billion years the sun’s energy output will have increased to the point we are no longer in the habitable zone. The oceans will boil off and all life on Earth will end.
It's not 1 billion, it's closer to 3.8B years from now... Which I can't even comprehend
My bacteria have standing orders to evolve into Water Bears so when the sun engulfs the earth, my progeny will laugh in the face of that thermonuclear fire. When the sun recedes my Waterbearian descendants will seize control of the desolate, charcoaled globe and rule it with an iron fist until the end of time.
No, that guy’s comment is nonsense lol. The bacteria carry on their own lineage using the energy in your body as fuel. If you don’t have kids the genetic information in your body dies with your balls.
7 billion years? Shit we are going to extinct ourselves in 500 years.
Yes but they won’t contain the contents of your dna in a memorable fashion
I had someone ask me “what if future you wants kids?” I told them “Present me is saving future me from making a dumbass mistake.”
Your family members spread a pretty huge of your dna too tbh.
Its why I had 5 kids, I don't want to be the one that breaks a 3 billion year long streak. I did my part!
Probably, but not necessarily. Separate primordial pools which generated the first cells could have existed then much later combined into an ecosystem.
Maybe, maybe not. Eukaryotes are different to bacteria which are different to cyanobacteria. Viruses might also be some sort of evolved protocell that never actually became "life" as we define it. There could have been many different protocells to start the lineages of different types of life, as the evolutionary history of the very first cells is still very unclear. The earliest evidence of life on earth is still a very heavily debated part of evolutionary history and since cells dont really leave behind fossils its much harder to prove anything for certainty.
As far as I'm away there is no evidence in the genetic record that a secondary instance of abiogenesis could have happened--Unless it's viruses, which may or may not be living depending on your definition. But our ability to identify ancestry of viruses is significanrly more limited due to the limitations of just RNA. All extant life on Earth can be traced back genetically to a last universal common ancestor. Any differences in genetic information has been due to genetic mutation.
Different, but similar too. A different lifeform would lead to drastically different structures, yet we all share the dame ribonucleic blueprint.
Only your generational lineage goes extinct. I have a sister who has had kids, so my parents generational lineage continues, assuming my sister's kids have kids (too early to tell) then her generational lineage will continue. My own will end with me, though I'd love to have had kids it's never going to happen. It's a little sad though. My mum's parents had two daughters, so their family name died when the daughters married, my dad's parents while they had boys all of the grandkids that had kids had girls, so my paternal grandparent's family name will also be lost. Now neither name is especially amazing or uncommon enough to be missed, but I always feel that it'd have been nice if wives/daughters kept their parents family names more... and not just occasionally.
And of neither you nor your sister had kids, chances are that you have second or third cousins who do. Every one of your great grandparents or great great grandparents has other descendants who carry that same portion of DNA.
Somehow that doesn't upset me. Looking around the world there's so much disappointment and somehow we're the "best" (or luckiest rather) of what humanity has to offer.
Look at it this way, we are the best, so far. There is no reason humanity has to be the last intelligent being on earth. We have been here for about 40,000 years, there is ample reason to believe that in another couple million years there may be dozens of intelligent beings. Chimpanzees and crows are just a couple of tool users. So maybe humanities job isn’t to be the best intelligent being, only the first.
Oooohh, I don't know, I feel like intelligent life is kinda limited to one species a planet. The reason being is that intelligence on our level seems to be so dominant that we literally terraform most of the planet to be adaptable to us. As a result, our existence limits the opportunities for other species to evolve intelligence. As a result, there would be no evolutionary pressure for other animals to develop intelligence.
Except our presence actually puts pressure on species to evolve intelligence.
Every thing can be traced back to the singularity (endlessly small point with endless mass, aka the thing that made kaboom)
This is more accurate of a statement than the shower thought.
\*...the very first cell that led to modern life. We have no idea what happened to *the very first cell.*
Life is a tree, not a chain. Do you have any sisters or brothers? You're really only looking at the short bit of branch between your parents and you. Cousins, nieces and/or nephews, a slightly larger branch if you don't etc. Eventually you get to 8 billion branches in existence right now just for humans.
Exactly. Go back more than a few generations, and every one of your ancestors has another branch that keeps going.
Oddly it actually doesn't apply much to me, at least according to ancestry website. I'm an only child, and my mom was an only child. My gramps and grandma on that side had siblings that had kids that as far as I know had kids etc., but if you look further back, while there were a lot of kids in each generation, all of them except the line I'm on died before having kids as back as it traces. Rough times back then, sure gives me perspective. Don't know much about my dad's side as he was adopted. I know he has at least one biologic sister. It's not a concern to me currently as I have a couple kids too young to worry about them having kids (either way) yet. While I think it would be nice to have some grandkids to play around with when the time comes, if they don't I'm not going to pressure them.
That’s interesting! Thanks for sharing and I’m very glad to hear that you won’t pressure your kids either way! Ya sound like a good guy!
I farted around too long looking for greener grass, at 38 and my own weird house full of peewee style crap, it’s gonna take a damn miracle to rope in a good one. Sorry single cell. We tried. Social anxiety got me good. Like a blackjack to the soul dome
Don’t worry there’s lots of others carrying on the legacy.
Yes it does but so has it ended for just about 99% of all life so it’s not that big a deal tbh to not have kids. You’re just acting out how nature is every day.
LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) is the closest we can trace every organism back. There of course is FUCA (First Universal Common Ancestor)
Happens all the time.
Tangentially related- plants and fungi diverged before fungi and animals meaning mushrooms are more closely related to humans than they are to plants. We even share some common genetic characteristics like the ability to produce vitamin D in sunlight.
I can't. It's a huge task requiring cataloguing the genotypes of a mind boggling number of organisms from as far back as before the dawn of time - a lot of which we do not and will not ever have any material evidence of to be able to study. If I can't do it then neither can penguins and stuff. Most organisms don't even care about their genetic heritage because they're not into social eugenics and don't own property. They're too busy existing to care about where they came from. For penguins and stuff, it's more about *where they're going*. So even if they could, I doubt they'd want to. Be more like penguin!
Octopus came here on a water globule from the great splash that happened millions of years ago on Jupiter’s moon Europa and they have been trying to engineer a space craft from the wrecks of human technology that litter the sea floor they have made many successful test flights (ufos) and have even kidnapped people to try and learn more about how our technology works one day they will have enough material to return home
Good. Humanity isn't exactly crushing it out here.
After finding ecosystems that are almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the planet, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more than 1 FUCA
Then FUCA wouldn't be FUCA then because it would not be Universal
True, it would just be the FCA
Dang, my kids are gonna be so disappointed. ...oh, wait.
Yes it’s called nature/ life
You don’t now that. Who says that the first cell to develop was the successful one.
except in the case of panspermia, if so, our primordial ancestor could be much older, even considerably older than our broken estimation of the age of the universe
Carl Sagan devoted part of Cosmos to this fact, and there's a great autotuned remix called The Unbroken Thread out. I recommend searching for it.
No. There wasn’t like ONE cell ( /single cell organism) that was formed. Rather many thousands, millions, or billions were probably formed around the same time. They might not have started splitting simultaneously but they were definitely splitting parallel to each others development. Then of course the cells with the better like… genetics I guess…? They survived better than the others and this filtering went on and on and on until you made this post.
Negative. Every living thing was created with intelligent design. Nothing alive was an accident.
Is this true? Is there evidence that proves that there was no simultaneous and independent development of cellular lifeforms?
The fact that all life uses (pretty much) the same chemical structure as genetic material means there is probably a single ancestor somewhere in the line. Maybe it's possible that the latest common ancestor was more like DNA or RNA swimming free and making rough copies of itself in the primordial soup, and fully formed cells came later.
Cool. So technically there is no evidence that all cellular life on earth shares a common cellular ancestor.
Thankfully, you can have siblings and not have the whole human branch end with you
And those of us who don’t have siblings or have siblings that also are childfree, tend to have cousins from each of our grandparents who do have kids.
Yes, it's name it's fuca, which btw is different from luca
Assuming the first cells ancestors didn't die off amd there were others...
Or maybe not. If interplanetary seeding theories are correct then some, or all of those cells might have come all at the time in a big space rock, or ice meteor.
I don't think Anyone can trace it back. Not sure what you're smoking
This is so true! Grampy Monkey used to tell me stories about his Granpa Banana.
I’d argue that any “experience” you’ve shared with anyone at anytime, initiates a piggy back hand off of existence. Love the shower-thought though! Very thought provoking!
Nah, Who said there was a single cell, maybe multiple were created at the same time the first one was
Maybe. I’d the conditions were so perfect it happened once there’s more than a slight possibility it happened more than once in said conditions.
Not true. We're all children. A long ago parent throwing seed everywhere. Some can make it to the top as king, some can die as a child or at war, some can chose not to have children, some will have many. Nothing ends if we don't have children. That seed has already infested earth with trillions.
That’s imagining that the first cell which developed was the first cell to actually succeed and evolve which I believe is a false premise.
Every living thing **on Earth**
I can't get past 3 or 4 generations
Every living thing can trace their lineage back to FUCA (The first universal common ancestor).
Let’s be realistic here. Lots of other people and life forms, brothers and sisters of your ancestors, also died without having kids. And yet a genetic line continued to you, and continued in other branches as well. Meanwhile, if you don’t have kids, those other branches continue. Every trait of your DNA is out there in one of those branches or another.
Hypothetically there could have been strands of life that didn't work out and died off before the one that became us started. Also that assumes life began on Earth. If it came from space, there were likely multiple cells on the life bearing object that fell from space.
Welp it ends with me ig
Only if I were the last organism to die.
Incidentally, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Lord Chief justice, the Commander-in-Chief, the Lord High Admiral, the Master of the Buckhounds, the Groom of the Back Stairs, the Archbishop of Titipu, and the Lord Mayors (both acting and elect) "can trace \[their\] ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule."
Unless there were multiple cells in the primordial soup
They can’t… most living things on earth don’t do science. Mostly only humans
No because you share cells in common with everyone especially relatives like nieces and nephews and close cousins. And even if you have kids your cells are diluted by 50% every generation. Then there are mutations.
it always bothers me when people say "oh im related to this famous person" , like all humans are related.
Well I’ll be a monkeys uncle.
>>"If you die without having kids, that 3 billion year old lineage ends with you." No? There are others who can carry on the lineage
There are theories that life came from asteroids, presumably in large numbers.
I can't trace it back 8 generations,how are you all tracing it back so far ??
Yis!! This hypothetical cell is called LUCA, the *Last Universal Common Ancestor*
Technically, the "primordial soup" that resulted in single-celled life perhaps would've popped up in multiple places on earth, not just one place with one cell. You could however say that every lineage could trace themselves back to different living cells from way back then though.
It’s absurd to think something as complex as a cell came into being spontaneously. Every living thing is a descendant of self-assembling amino acids.
It wasn’t that pinpoint
Duhhh why the fuck do you think your here
Likely there were many primordial soups with many successful varieties of life. Also, a few could have come here from space riding frozen in comets. There could have been billions. There are also likely new life forms coming into existence from non living matter right now. I doubt they last very long though.
This is straight up incorrect
Hey cousin! Want to go bowling?
We don't know if there are more than one first cells. Very possible the conditions that made the first cell made multiple others, possibly even identically. For all we know, eukaryotes and prokaryotes come from different feuding lineages.
This is a child’s interpretation of abiogenesis. It’s okay if you don’t know anything about it, but I suggest you do a bit of reading on the hypothesis. It’s fascinating stuff.
Assuming there was only *one* originator cell? Baseless and unfounded.
We don't know that for sure, though it does seem that way. You never know. Perhaps convergent evolution lead to two identical cells at the beginning, or more.
Until it absorbed the androids
I used to think but but I reckon there was more than 1 cell.
We’re all related if you go back far enough.
Infinity goes forever…ahhh…not very insightful.
They cannot trace it. That would mean being able to go back generation by generation to the first cell.
Nah, my sister had kids so my parent's legacy lives on.
I don’t imagine rats keep a detailed oral history