Thank you Anton, for making what was likely a very dense research paper into a video that was much more palatable for those of us who have diverse interests in science, but who lack the deep technical background to digest the info from the source. I've followed LUCA and genomics for many years, which gives me a better ability to understand the terms and concepts you've presented, but my gawd that was a dense presentation!! Well done And thanks again.
The important thing is that LUCA was not the first living organism. It was just the last that all modern life comes from. There were probably other branches of the evolution tree at the time of LUCA but all of them have died out. And it does not make the organism extraordinary. By definition there must have been a LUCA.
(Edit for clearity, a LUCA for all life) Well there doesnt *have* to be a LUCIA. You could have biogensis occur multiple times even on planet Earth. Heck it might be a common-ish event to this day just one that we havent observed and wouldnt be likely to accidentally observe. Rather a LUCIA suggests that the avalible avenues for life emerging are either rare enough that once one lifeform started it outceompeated all other life forms that have since emerged OR that the protien sequences avalible to become a self replicating life in any given enviroment (or at least our given enviroment) where limited and always became DNA, and RNA that was capable of some amount of horizontal gene transfer when life forms are new, thus their DNA shows up like a mutation. Or a combo of both.
> By definition there must have been a LUCA Not by definition. That relies on the fact that all modern life has a common origin in the first place. That's extremely likely given the evidence, but it isn't true by definition.
We have only ourselves to blame that so many people don't understand evolution. That tree is accurate, but it doesn't show that there are an uncountable number of other trees that no longer exist. The existence of a LUCA is because all other possible ancestors, and their entire clades, died out.
Don't beat yourself up. We haven't found any evidence for transitional forms (the supposed nodes between the branches). Each kind of creature just "appears" in the fossil record with no transitions between kinds. Over a billion fossils are catalogued there should be a plethora of transitional kinds, but we don't find them. Check it out. Bats are just bats, and so on ... Darwin himself said it would be the most serious objection to his theory. No wonder evolution is so "difficult to understand". For a long time, I used to buy it, but now I believe Jesus instead. He forgives!
i agree that evolution should be better understood. When I went to school in England in the 60s we were never taught anything about Darwin, evolution or natural selection, even though they are so simple that even a child can understand. I still feel angry about it today.
And it might be the success of LUCA (or it's ancestors or descendants) specifically that caused them to be wiped out. Competing for the same resources etc.
There was probably a period where simpler more fragile organisms were forming, developing, and ultimately going extinct Until a convergence of more stable conditions and codependent system of life forms keep the flame of life going
How could something alive come from something that was previously not alive? The chicken and the egg isn’t just a metaphor, it’s true that you cannot have one without the other.
@@t.walker3101 The definition of what is considered “alive” is kinda all over the place. For example there’s still a big debate on whether or not viruses are alive due to how simple they are.
@@t.walker3101same way an engine starts. An external force replicates of the motions of a running engine to the point where those motions of a running engine allow the engine to sustain itself and actually become a running engine. So unalive activity happened to act as if it was alive because of the massive potential for randomness that this planet has. Once that activity became self sustaining without being acted upon by randomness, then it became alive.
@t.walker3101 Are you suggesting it was the work of one of the thousands of indemonstrable, magical worship wizards that humans have invented over the last few thousand years?
I have never regretted subscribing to your channel. Every time I come back I enjoy the way you share your passion for all of the new science happening around us. Thank you. People will always need to learn, and you are helping them do that.
My name is LUCA I lived some 4 billion years ago I’m the ancestor of all of extant biota Yes, I’m the OG, don’t you know? [Chorus] If you feel something deep inside Some primal urge, that’s were my genes still reside Just don’t ask me how life first began Just don’t ask me how life first began Just don’t ask me how life first began
LUCA, like Mitochondrial Eve and Y chromosome Adam were neither first nor alone. They just happen to be the single organism from which all other descendants derive. Given that many species go extinct, LUCA is a movable designation. It is likely that every mass extinction event shifted which organism had the title LUCA forward to a new common ancestor.
@@stagnant-name5851 I think that blacksmith67 means that if, at a certain moment in the history of life, all members of an early branch of LUCA's descendants were to die off, the LUCA designation could shift to a later organism whose descendants included all surviving life (excluding the newly extinct branch).
LUCA is a virtual organism. They are making models of what it might be. So, while LUCA can mean one thing, it also means many things at the same time, It does not depend on the mass extinction because whatever survived the mass extinctions still carries forward the genetic history of what LUCA might have been.
yes every time an ancient branch died off, if they did, it would shift. but i think we havent discovered any such event simply because we dont know all primordial branches all the way back then
@@jem2017 Exactly so, but it doesn’t require an entire branch to die off, it just requires that the last descendants in a branch die off. The last common ancestor of all mammals would shift with the death of the few species of monotremes that are left.
it's none sense.. all organism have membranes so they find the same dna for membrane making and say look similarities between animals and micro organisms. it's circular argument.
9:25 - A MINIMUM age of 4.2 billion years. That lines up really well with the Jack Hills Zircons from Australia, which showed enrichment of the kind of carbon isotopes you only see when carbon sources have been processed by living organisms. That also means life SURVIVED the Late Heavy Bombardment, which is an impressive achievement. Another thing is that an age like that does add a little more strength to the argument for panspermia because of the kind of complexity of the community LUCA likely lived in. Going from zero to that level of complexity in less than 200 million years is awfully fast.
Panspermia, as a theory, or rather hypothesis, is something I've always seen as a cop-out. It doesn't answer the real question of how life comes from non-life, just kicks the question down the road, so to speak.
@@douglasthompson201I know, dude. That’s the craziest fucking part to me. Like, at one point, did the right amount of molecules, energy, and nutrients JUST COME TOGETHER and start moving and replicating and shit? If you go back far enough, scientists and creationists say the same shit! Life just pops into existence!
One thought that few talk about outside of academia is that cell walls are not reproduced by DNA or RNA encoded genes. The membrane that surrounded LUCA has been stretched, separated and grown with every cell division for approximately 4 billion years.
So everything inside the cell works through dna but the cell wall is actually a separate structure that‘s just kind of there and works completely on its own?
@@realrebelli0n Cell walls are coded for -- there's features on them that are selected for and against. Something has to make the lipids in the phospholipid bilayer. But it does form into a droplet with a cavity when in water due to having two hydrophobic ends and two hydrophilic ends, so it can self-assemble when in water. I think the OP is talking about how cells divide to create new cells, so it's kind of like the same cell wall has been shared among all life. But the extra material is still generated by the cells via instructions from DNA/RNA. It's a bit like the Ship of Theseus -- when all the parts have been completely replaced at what point is it a new boat?
I think you mean cell membrane Also they are coded for(at least there is code for repairing and expanding the membrane). But yes organisms don't have the code to make one from scratch. Although its actually even more unclear than that. We don't actually know if the first cell membrane was something that formed through non biological phiscial processes that was then just inhabited by some self replicating molecule. Or if some self replicating molecule evoved to envelop itself under certain condition. Or something inbetween. There are a bunch of possiblities for how the first cell membranes came into existance.
Not a surprise and no coincedence. On purpose. I even think earth was created at this same spot for that purpose. And we learn about the history now, is because we have the tools and the right education, curiosity, attention and intelligence. Life started as an experiment, a learning and creating and evolving proces. Not perfect. Not ready, but very interesting. The 'why' is still unexplained but in the meanwhile we are able to enjoy a fascinating display of possibilities.
Things like this just make me think more and more that life is probably very vast, i believe it will be very common on planets with the right conditions, and with enough time it will evolve.
I think large parts of this video fall into a very common misconception about LUCA. LUCA is not necessarily an organism or species. Our only empirical understanding of LUCA is as a collection of genes. Just as the K-12 and Shigella strains in E. coli are extremely distinct phenotypically, proto-archaea and bacteria may have existed in the LUCA era with the same pan-LUCA genome. The fuzziness between strains, species, and higher order taxa almost certainly existed in the LUCA era and means there may be no objective LUCA genome or organism. It is challenging to put dates on the LUCA era for similar reasons.
If youll allow me to go off on a tangent, many years ago I read in the Farmers Almanac that all humans are related (mathematically at least) to all other humans by no more than 30th cousin. Made me imagine writing a letter to Queen Elizabeth and starting with the salutation "Dear Cuz."
Yeah no way. If it takes a generous 30 years to make the next generation, that's 30*30 = 900 years. I'm pretty sure there's uncontacted tribes in the Amazon that are not related to me past their ancestors crossing the Bering Strait. And Aborigines. There is a number, but it's not 30.
amazing! it kind of fits that a first thing that duplicated itself was around in the hot water before anything was alive, then randomly some of them were like, Hey, what's with the bad hair? Oh, you're not alive. My bad. Hey you, over there!
That would be an interesting storyline or hard-sci-fi movie topic. One small subtle change 4 billion years ago and life is completely different. Or maybe it's pretty much the same thing! Cool to think about though.
I have been interested in the origin of viruses for a long time so I will watch all of those future videos. Lots of questions about how that happened and at what costs and advantages.
It's worth noting that _probably_ hard upper limit on when life formed is probably the Theia Impact event. It's one thing for life to endure through the Late Heavy Bombardment, the collision that probably formed the moon would have turned the planet into a ball of magma. That said, we don't know exactly when that happened.
@@mdean3801 except that Susan Vega's Luka gets beat up regularly by her significant other: "Yes I think I'm okay, walked into the door again ... If you hear something late at night, some kind of trouble, some kind of fight. Please don't ask me what it was."
Imagine a "what if" scenario: The first life, life analog, or organic thingy that became life eventually, was actually 2 different organisms the were very very similar albeit originating independently from one another from the hypothesized aminoacid soup, and both lines survived to the present day, meaning there are no luca OR fuca
Sure, but it should be pointed out that organic chemistry replicating (and life itself) came a couple billion years before LUCA. LUCA would be a fairly recent life form in the total history of life on Earth.
@@duncanmountford8426 I replicate, therefore I am. Humans are made of 36 trillion Eukaryote cells consisting of organic chemistry machines. These cells evolve over time as DNA mistakes change their behavior. Pretty much the rule of molecular biology.
Nightwish have a song is inspired by Dawkins’ book of the same name, The Greatest Show on Earth. It covers 4.6 billion years to the present, Uses quotes from his book that are read by him, mentions LUCA, and, if you choose to check it out and watch the Live At Wembley 2015 version to the very end, even has him live on stage quoting from the origin of species. A compositional masterpiece.
My name is Luca,I live on the second floor😂(joke),with all the trillions of galaxies in space,most likely harbour intelligent life,we just can’t observe them yet,maybe they’re observing us long before we even knew about our own galaxy!.✌️♥️
I would like to point out this: think about Darwin Finches, in less that 5000 years, they diversified so much that some are completely different from the original Finches! And I not talking about Suttle differences, some body part are completely different. If they done that imagine what life can do in 100 millions years...
There is something almost frightening to think that the Earth as it is today would probably be unable to create life spontaneously! I don't know if frightening is the right word... maybe awe-inspiring.
Since we know the broad time period for life’s development those geologists and paleontologists know how early to look. Although it’s quite hard to find the remnants of squishy things in rocks, but since they lived near silts there may be something to find. Awesome!
And once we figure out the identity of LUCA, then there's the neat aspect of realizing that each of us is just the newest link in a chain that goes back over 4 billion years without a single break.
there was a sci fi show that the alien culture was built on remembering the names of every ancestor in your line... can you imagine extending back to first mammal, first chordate, etc
It seems more and more that life evolved as soon as it possibly could on Earth and intelligent life evolved almost towards the end (one billion years until the sun hot enough to lead to runaway greenhouse). Contrary to Robin Hanson who thinks abiogenesis is more likely to be the harder step and that there's no hard jump between microbes and social animals, I would suggest that life is extremely common but intelligent or even social or even multicellular life is rare. There may have been some difficult and unlikely step that occurred on Earth to kick off multicellular life as the "Boring Billion" ended.
@@bjornfeuerbacher5514 I don't buy it, because I think the human hand is pretty vital for making us what we are, and we'd see some fossil evidence of creatures evolving towards having comparable manipulators.
@@ForwardSynthesis First, I wouldn't say that human hands are the only possibility. Second, there are examples of quite complicated reptilian claws. Third, the fossil record still is quite spotty.
It's fascinating how life seems to always be experimenting with various forms in order to reach some new paradigm. It makes me wonder what's coming next. It could be something incomprehensible to us now.
Its not experimenting at all, it’s providing excellent designs throughout its entire history, not only excellent specimens, but excellent ecosystems adapting to ever-changing environment.
The LUCA is similar to Rhodopseudomonas palustris It metabolizers and fixes CO2, in metabolizers and fixes nitrogen, it’s photosynthetic, metabolizes, hydrogen, sulfur, and iron. it’s the most versatile organism on earth
@@spiralsun1 What Da Math was what he used to do before his current format. He would explain concepts (usually space related) by using video games like Universe Sandbox
When life appeared on Earth, the galaxy was already at least 9 or10 billion years old, and the late bombardment meteorites had to originate somewhere outside Earth. Potentially, our galaxy could have collided with other passing galaxies and the probability that LUCA originated elsewhere than Earth is high, so we may never know what the conditions under which life started were like. Maybe some long dead world, who can tell? Maybe a remnant of Theia, even?
Quite easily, those with less brain development evolved it to modify its behaviour. Because they always kept being useful. More complex cognition happened much later. Instincts are still essential for us. The exact genetic encoding will be more complex.
The samme way as for all animals, insects, bacteria, viruses, earth worms, lice, and everything else that has the ability to get offspring. Only those with the right behavior (instincts) survive and get offspring. The others die off...
Archaeobiology and results of large scale genetic research are so intriguing, thanx for your videos! I'm spiraling on a dumb question: if oxigen started to exist 2 billion years ago, why do we need to assume more ancient anaerobial life forms were acquatic? Does this depend on the formation of glico something partially water repellent membranes?
I tried reading the bible once, but the writing was terrible. I've heard the story of Cain and Able being described as so "deep and meaningful" or whatever but it was like 2 sentences long. Is there a full version somewhere, or is it really just "so yeah there was Cain and Abel, they tried giving gifts to god and god only liked the other one so his brother robloxed him."
Imagine going back in time and squishing our most-common ancestor, coming back, and seeing basically all life rerolling into completely different things with completely different orders of dominance. Heck, we could have been the least-productive and least-intelligent dominant species of the multiverse of possibilities purely by a missed exposure to a rogue unit of virus.
Adinine is a very important precursor molecule in atp/adp, rna and dna, so it seems likely to have come early. Maybe because of the elements that it's made of, a meteor or dry ice (co2) coated in liquid nitrogen (n) hitting the upper hydrogen atmosphere (h2) could have made pockets of it if it were the right size and angle. What it might do from there I wonder about. I've thought that before having competition, photosynthetic would probably extract co2, freeze water over it, and then evolved to go deeper with more specialized wavelength photosynthesis, but then if reaching thermal vents did anything immediately or what I don't know.
That 3-D cell rendering at 2:08 is gorgeous. All the others I have seen look drab compared to that. It looks a little like Grogu's floating hover cab. Any chance of getting access to where that video was generated?
I suspect panspermia is what brought life to Earth, and I expect both LUCA and its viruses arrived together. We really need to be closely examining comets where they might still be abundant.
it's definitely possible can't live on a planet full of life and know what we know about comets and asteroids and not think it's possible but still doesn't answer the question of where did that life come did it randomly come together on some other planet or maybe even in space some nebula
Modern day Acetogens and Methogens both have a primitive version of the Krebs Cycle and can be found in the Alkaline Vents. (Nick Lane. "The Vital Qjuestion.")
My hypothesis is that every planet is a 3d printer of sorts. All of the material to create life is available on many planets. All that is needed is the instructions for life, which I think is available in abundance in space. Therefore, life starts on many, if not most planets. In the early stages of development many planets are very similar. However, as they cool and form they diverge on many factors: distance from a sun, types of inorganic material, and so forth. So the question is not "Where is life?" The question is "Where has life survived?" 🙂 BTW, I love your videos.
As a barbarian, my pet peeve is explaining the concept of LUCA to vegans ❤ 😂 ps. if you are in any way interested in this topic, I can't recommend Nightwish's (symphonic metal) concept album *Endless Forms most Beautiful* that was done inspired by and in co-operation with Richard Dawkins (he narrates parts and even joined on stage during some live shows). Especially the song The Greatest Show on Earth (live at Tampere version) is my personal favourite, it is a tribute to life of Earth, since it's beginning to the end
Essentially from scratch we can build a nuclear-powered Gerald R. Ford Class aircraft carrier, (replete with aircraft, radar, weapon-systems etc.) but we haven't a clue of how to build LUCA.
It is frustrating that so many people, even those in the different scientific domains, do not understand that life is simply another manifestation of entropy. Self organising entropy. As the universe expands and its uncountable and unimaginably tiny bits interact with each other, life is bound to occur. In many places.
I love your channel man. But maybe give some theories or studies a couple of years to dwell before making a statement on it. Have seen so many youtubers end up almost ridiculed in the end because of it. Either that or thumbnail clickbaits. All the best🙏 Keep'em coming
Thank you Anton, for making what was likely a very dense research paper into a video that was much more palatable for those of us who have diverse interests in science, but who lack the deep technical background to digest the info from the source. I've followed LUCA and genomics for many years, which gives me a better ability to understand the terms and concepts you've presented, but my gawd that was a dense presentation!! Well done And thanks again.
or maybe he just asked some AI to do it... who knows these days
The important thing is that LUCA was not the first living organism. It was just the last that all modern life comes from. There were probably other branches of the evolution tree at the time of LUCA but all of them have died out. And it does not make the organism extraordinary. By definition there must have been a LUCA.
It is fascinating to think of the branches of the tree of life that no longer exist
So, so many failed experiments
what about FUCA? first universal common ancestor?
(Edit for clearity, a LUCA for all life) Well there doesnt *have* to be a LUCIA. You could have biogensis occur multiple times even on planet Earth. Heck it might be a common-ish event to this day just one that we havent observed and wouldnt be likely to accidentally observe.
Rather a LUCIA suggests that the avalible avenues for life emerging are either rare enough that once one lifeform started it outceompeated all other life forms that have since emerged
OR
that the protien sequences avalible to become a self replicating life in any given enviroment (or at least our given enviroment) where limited and always became DNA, and RNA that was capable of some amount of horizontal gene transfer when life forms are new, thus their DNA shows up like a mutation.
Or a combo of both.
> By definition there must have been a LUCA
Not by definition. That relies on the fact that all modern life has a common origin in the first place. That's extremely likely given the evidence, but it isn't true by definition.
@@CG64Mushro0mLUCA's ancestors...yes.
We have only ourselves to blame that so many people don't understand evolution. That tree is accurate, but it doesn't show that there are an uncountable number of other trees that no longer exist. The existence of a LUCA is because all other possible ancestors, and their entire clades, died out.
Don't beat yourself up. We haven't found any evidence for transitional forms (the supposed nodes between the branches). Each kind of creature just "appears" in the fossil record with no transitions between kinds. Over a billion fossils are catalogued there should be a plethora of transitional kinds, but we don't find them. Check it out. Bats are just bats, and so on ... Darwin himself said it would be the most serious objection to his theory. No wonder evolution is so "difficult to understand". For a long time, I used to buy it, but now I believe Jesus instead. He forgives!
i agree that evolution should be better understood. When I went to school in England in the 60s we were never taught anything about Darwin, evolution or natural selection, even though they are so simple that even a child can understand. I still feel angry about it today.
And it might be the success of LUCA (or it's ancestors or descendants) specifically that caused them to be wiped out. Competing for the same resources etc.
Nono. Religion did this.
ALL HAIL LUCA! OUR ONE TRUE GOD AND SAVIOR!
:D
There was probably a period
where simpler more fragile organisms were forming, developing, and ultimately going extinct
Until a convergence of more stable conditions and codependent system of life forms keep the flame of life going
How could something alive come from something that was previously not alive? The chicken and the egg isn’t just a metaphor, it’s true that you cannot have one without the other.
@@t.walker3101 The definition of what is considered “alive” is kinda all over the place. For example there’s still a big debate on whether or not viruses are alive due to how simple they are.
@@t.walker3101same way an engine starts. An external force replicates of the motions of a running engine to the point where those motions of a running engine allow the engine to sustain itself and actually become a running engine. So unalive activity happened to act as if it was alive because of the massive potential for randomness that this planet has. Once that activity became self sustaining without being acted upon by randomness, then it became alive.
@@t.walker3101 over billions of years, across quadrillions of habitable planets, a bunch of chemicals fell in such a way that they became biological
@t.walker3101
Are you suggesting it was the work of one of the thousands of indemonstrable, magical worship wizards that humans have invented over the last few thousand years?
I have never regretted subscribing to your channel. Every time I come back I enjoy the way you share your passion for all of the new science happening around us. Thank you. People will always need to learn, and you are helping them do that.
I must admit that Luca bears a remarkable resemblance to my late Uncle James, although his projectile was shorter and he used oxygen quite heavily.
I’d wager they’re related 🤔
Was his flagellum as big as Luca's?
😂❤😂 AAc😂😂e😂😂
Damn uncle james hurt you.. trauma we must heal from lol
Is Luca the brother of Adam or Eve?
My name is LUCA
I lived some 4 billion years ago
I’m the ancestor of all of extant biota
Yes, I’m the OG, don’t you know?
[Chorus]
If you feel something deep inside
Some primal urge, that’s were my genes still reside
Just don’t ask me how life first began
Just don’t ask me how life first began
Just don’t ask me how life first began
Thank you Suzanne Vega
Genius
That needed to be written. Suzanne Vega would be proud
Ahh very good!
Just don’t ask me what it was
Anton's smile at the end makes my day every time.
It is so forced. Like he is doing it by free will because he wants to. It isn't that natural smile. The mans smart so I am not gonna give him crap.
@@xPumaFangx"im not gonna give him crap" *gives him crap*
Gae
Gae
I don't cringe easily but his smile does it every time..
Thanks for your wide range of scientific interests and concise summaries. It's free Community College.
LUCA, like Mitochondrial Eve and Y chromosome Adam were neither first nor alone. They just happen to be the single organism from which all other descendants derive. Given that many species go extinct, LUCA is a movable designation. It is likely that every mass extinction event shifted which organism had the title LUCA forward to a new common ancestor.
I dont think any extinction event has ever completely killed every living thing. SO that life needs to emerge from primordial soup once again.
@@stagnant-name5851 I think that blacksmith67 means that if, at a certain moment in the history of life, all members of an early branch of LUCA's descendants were to die off, the LUCA designation could shift to a later organism whose descendants included all surviving life (excluding the newly extinct branch).
LUCA is a virtual organism. They are making models of what it might be. So, while LUCA can mean one thing, it also means many things at the same time, It does not depend on the mass extinction because whatever survived the mass extinctions still carries forward the genetic history of what LUCA might have been.
yes every time an ancient branch died off, if they did, it would shift. but i think we havent discovered any such event simply because we dont know all primordial branches all the way back then
@@jem2017 Exactly so, but it doesn’t require an entire branch to die off, it just requires that the last descendants in a branch die off. The last common ancestor of all mammals would shift with the death of the few species of monotremes that are left.
To be more precise, it’s the latest common ancestor of all _extant_ life.
Not all. Viruses are not descendants of LUCA
to be even more precise, it's the latest common ancestor of all _extant terrestrial_ life
well also the common ancestor of all known extinct life thus far
except viruses
it's none sense.. all organism have membranes so they find the same dna for membrane making and say look similarities between animals and micro organisms. it's circular argument.
9:25 - A MINIMUM age of 4.2 billion years. That lines up really well with the Jack Hills Zircons from Australia, which showed enrichment of the kind of carbon isotopes you only see when carbon sources have been processed by living organisms. That also means life SURVIVED the Late Heavy Bombardment, which is an impressive achievement. Another thing is that an age like that does add a little more strength to the argument for panspermia because of the kind of complexity of the community LUCA likely lived in. Going from zero to that level of complexity in less than 200 million years is awfully fast.
Right. That was my exact question when he finished the thesis statement. “So where did it come from?”
it does makes sense though. Viruses really don't mess around, the fuckers are basically the fucking backbone of natural selection lmao
@@meskes4059 from the outside 🥸
Panspermia, as a theory, or rather hypothesis, is something I've always seen as a cop-out. It doesn't answer the real question of how life comes from non-life, just kicks the question down the road, so to speak.
@@douglasthompson201I know, dude. That’s the craziest fucking part to me. Like, at one point, did the right amount of molecules, energy, and nutrients JUST COME TOGETHER and start moving and replicating and shit? If you go back far enough, scientists and creationists say the same shit! Life just pops into existence!
Ok Anton I find myself coming to your channel every time I want definitive information. Tyvm !
One thought that few talk about outside of academia is that cell walls are not reproduced by DNA or RNA encoded genes. The membrane that surrounded LUCA has been stretched, separated and grown with every cell division for approximately 4 billion years.
So everything inside the cell works through dna but the cell wall is actually a separate structure that‘s just kind of there and works completely on its own?
@@realrebelli0n Cell walls are coded for -- there's features on them that are selected for and against. Something has to make the lipids in the phospholipid bilayer. But it does form into a droplet with a cavity when in water due to having two hydrophobic ends and two hydrophilic ends, so it can self-assemble when in water.
I think the OP is talking about how cells divide to create new cells, so it's kind of like the same cell wall has been shared among all life. But the extra material is still generated by the cells via instructions from DNA/RNA. It's a bit like the Ship of Theseus -- when all the parts have been completely replaced at what point is it a new boat?
I think you mean cell membrane Also they are coded for(at least there is code for repairing and expanding the membrane). But yes organisms don't have the code to make one from scratch.
Although its actually even more unclear than that. We don't actually know if the first cell membrane was something that formed through non biological phiscial processes that was then just inhabited by some self replicating molecule. Or if some self replicating molecule evoved to envelop itself under certain condition. Or something inbetween. There are a bunch of possiblities for how the first cell membranes came into existance.
Like 🎉
❤
Really makes you wonder about life on the planet as a whole. It's just mind blowing that we have all this technology to learn all these things
Not a surprise and no coincedence. On purpose. I even think earth was created at this same spot for that purpose. And we learn about the history now, is because we have the tools and the right education, curiosity, attention and intelligence. Life started as an experiment, a learning and creating and evolving proces. Not perfect. Not ready, but very interesting. The 'why' is still unexplained but in the meanwhile we are able to enjoy a fascinating display of possibilities.
@@annemaria5126
No there is no purpose. life is just a very good way to increase entropy.
I love how you explain complex concepts for everyone to understand. It's actually really cool.
this channel is so amazing! thank you anton!
Things like this just make me think more and more that life is probably very vast, i believe it will be very common on planets with the right conditions, and with enough time it will evolve.
Mathematically, logically, probabilistically ...without a shadow of a doubt, yes !
Note that there is some survivorship bias here, as we can only see genes from LUCA that still exist today
Wrong!!
@@MJ-revered elaborate?
@@MJ-revered long time no see, Diogenes
@@Lttmtf the rest of Luca's genes were revealed to him in a dream, apparently.
@@MJ-revered fool
Always was interested in my ancestry❤ this is a way cheeper options than those DNA tests, way more fun answer
3:52 "...subscribe and stuff.." 😹👍
I think large parts of this video fall into a very common misconception about LUCA. LUCA is not necessarily an organism or species. Our only empirical understanding of LUCA is as a collection of genes. Just as the K-12 and Shigella strains in E. coli are extremely distinct phenotypically, proto-archaea and bacteria may have existed in the LUCA era with the same pan-LUCA genome. The fuzziness between strains, species, and higher order taxa almost certainly existed in the LUCA era and means there may be no objective LUCA genome or organism. It is challenging to put dates on the LUCA era for similar reasons.
If youll allow me to go off on a tangent, many years ago I read in the Farmers Almanac that all humans are related (mathematically at least) to all other humans by no more than 30th cousin. Made me imagine writing a letter to Queen Elizabeth and starting with the salutation "Dear Cuz."
I dont allow it i’m afraid…
I'm guessing you haven't heard of the six degrees of Kevin Bacon before?
Op@@tripleheadedmonkey6613
@@tripleheadedmonkey6613 I think the article was referring to physical/genetic relationships.
Yeah no way. If it takes a generous 30 years to make the next generation, that's 30*30 = 900 years. I'm pretty sure there's uncontacted tribes in the Amazon that are not related to me past their ancestors crossing the Bering Strait. And Aborigines. There is a number, but it's not 30.
Hello wonderful Luca!
Fascinating that a mechanism of evolution seems to depend on adapted lifeform "eating" the waste of the lifeform(s) from which it evolved.
Thanks for the the EXCELLENT presentation, Anton.
Wonderful as always Anton. Thank you. 🙃☺️😎
So this thing just had to evolve and now here we are paying bills 😅
amazing! it kind of fits that a first thing that duplicated itself was around in the hot water before anything was alive, then randomly some of them were like, Hey, what's with the bad hair? Oh, you're not alive. My bad. Hey you, over there!
One of my favorite youtuber's Anton. Keep on keeping on friend. The universe is beautiful, and you do good work sharing that with others.
as a non biologist, thank you for making this understandable. (and the comments also helped)
anton is the best teacher ever in a variety of sciences. wow thanks so much for this and God Bless You!
I wonder what types of cellular machinery died out with those other microbes and what they would have become if they survived.
That would be an interesting storyline or hard-sci-fi movie topic. One small subtle change 4 billion years ago and life is completely different. Or maybe it's pretty much the same thing! Cool to think about though.
@@jenkem4464it would interesting to see how different Earth’s Ecosystems would be if more or less kingdoms successfully developed
One trait that died out was immortality.
This is mind blowing stuff. Where it all began. Great video Anton!
Hello wonderful Anton, this is person.
Cauliflower evolved into person or the other way round?
Very interesting, thanks Anton.
I have been interested in the origin of viruses for a long time so I will watch all of those future videos. Lots of questions about how that happened and at what costs and advantages.
I doubt there's only one origin of viruses. Once the machinery of life is in place, it's an accident that can just happen
Love your channel Brother...Always something INTERESTING 👍
It's worth noting that _probably_ hard upper limit on when life formed is probably the Theia Impact event. It's one thing for life to endure through the Late Heavy Bombardment, the collision that probably formed the moon would have turned the planet into a ball of magma. That said, we don't know exactly when that happened.
Depending on what sort of extremist extremophiles, but yes, I think you're probably right. That one would be rough to survive.
Very interesting video. Thanks for making these!
My name is LUCA,
I live on the second floor,
I live upstairs from you,
Yes i think youve seen me before...
Another Suzanne Vega "Luka" Reference...
I knew I would find one of these.
very romantic..
@@marcoflumino another comment referencing another Suzanne vega comment
@@mdean3801 except that Susan Vega's Luka gets beat up regularly by her significant other: "Yes I think I'm okay, walked into the door again ... If you hear something late at night, some kind of trouble, some kind of fight. Please don't ask me what it was."
3:52 is one of the reasons why i like your vids :) no need for commercials if content defends itself
Imagine a "what if" scenario:
The first life, life analog, or organic thingy that became life eventually, was actually 2 different organisms the were very very similar albeit originating independently from one another from the hypothesized aminoacid soup, and both lines survived to the present day, meaning there are no luca OR fuca
Incredible! Thank you and as always, have a wonderful day!
Once organic chemistry could replicate, there was no stopping it. That's basically the meaning of life, we exist because we can replicate.
lol
Sure, but it should be pointed out that organic chemistry replicating (and life itself) came a couple billion years before LUCA. LUCA would be a fairly recent life form in the total history of life on Earth.
Chemistry doesn’t replicate. Chemical evolution is impossible.
@@duncanmountford8426 I replicate, therefore I am. Humans are made of 36 trillion Eukaryote cells consisting of organic chemistry machines. These cells evolve over time as DNA mistakes change their behavior. Pretty much the rule of molecular biology.
Life is survival to the fittest.
Nightwish have a song is inspired by Dawkins’ book of the same name, The Greatest Show on Earth. It covers 4.6 billion years to the present, Uses quotes from his book that are read by him, mentions LUCA, and, if you choose to check it out and watch the Live At Wembley 2015 version to the very end, even has him live on stage quoting from the origin of species.
A compositional masterpiece.
Didn’t know about this, Luca is the name I gave to my brother, my parents allowed me to choose back then
It’s my name as well, it feels surreal to hear Anton say my name in a video 😂
My preternatural ability of premonition strikes again!
I was literally thinking about this subject this morning when I woke up.
My name is Luca,I live on the second floor😂(joke),with all the trillions of galaxies in space,most likely harbour intelligent life,we just can’t observe them yet,maybe they’re observing us long before we even knew about our own galaxy!.✌️♥️
And if aliens hear something late at night,
Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight
Let them not ask what it was.
@@arctic_haze ♥️
Time dilation 🤯
Well, Luca is a name
Another Suzanne Vega "Luka" Reference...
It is only in a few rare universes. Just letting you know Anton. Keep spreading wonderful person,
The life process in each of our cells has been alive since LUCA. It is our immortality.
You mean mortality.
@@dustinb1070 well, nothing is is more hereditary than death hahah
(this comment was a personal attack toward cancer cells)
@@dustinb1070 no. dna's only purpose is to propel itself as far as it can into the future. Immortality.
I would like to point out this: think about Darwin Finches, in less that 5000 years, they diversified so much that some are completely different from the original Finches! And I not talking about Suttle differences, some body part are completely different. If they done that imagine what life can do in 100 millions years...
my super ultra great hyper grand father was a slime.
I watch alot pf your videos so decided I should do u the honor of subscribing finally lol thank you for all the interesting information
Anton is the BOAT. Keep shining brother :D. Anton also inspired me to make my own YT channel. Thank you! 💛
There is something almost frightening to think that the Earth as it is today would probably be unable to create life spontaneously!
I don't know if frightening is the right word... maybe awe-inspiring.
1:09 I can tell you, that looks nothing like my great ^600M grandpa and grandma. They got the tendril looking things all wrong.
This made me chuckle
Love your channel man. Keep it goin.
Hello wonderful Anton. Hello wonderful commet readers.
Since we know the broad time period for life’s development those geologists and paleontologists know how early to look. Although it’s quite hard to find the remnants of squishy things in rocks, but since they lived near silts there may be something to find. Awesome!
Thanks!
Fascinating, exciting and nice presentation👍❤
"This isn't the LUCA you're LUC-ing for." - some Jedi a long time ago in a galaxy far away...
I love how open the "very likely" attribute really is. Better than saying : "We imagine it looking like this."
And once we figure out the identity of LUCA, then there's the neat aspect of realizing that each of us is just the newest link in a chain that goes back over 4 billion years without a single break.
well to be fair any life that doesnt pass on the genes to new life would be a break, but.
@@wyattmurphy7153 oh damn, im gonna be my family's break 🥰
there was a sci fi show that the alien culture was built on remembering the names of every ancestor in your line... can you imagine extending back to first mammal, first chordate, etc
@@pauls5745What a cool idea... we're definitely losing something, not documenting more of our roots.
@@pauls5745 enemy mine?
wow I knew crispr could edit genes but didn't realize that's where it came from
you are a wealth of knowledge
best channel on RUclips.
My name is Luca.
I live on the second floor
…..
Whoa, Suzanne Vega "Luka" reference....
me too
And the viruses probably lived on the first floor :)
And I thought I was the only one here that thought of that song...
Thank you, information Inwas looking for very simply explained. Excellent
It seems more and more that life evolved as soon as it possibly could on Earth and intelligent life evolved almost towards the end (one billion years until the sun hot enough to lead to runaway greenhouse). Contrary to Robin Hanson who thinks abiogenesis is more likely to be the harder step and that there's no hard jump between microbes and social animals, I would suggest that life is extremely common but intelligent or even social or even multicellular life is rare. There may have been some difficult and unlikely step that occurred on Earth to kick off multicellular life as the "Boring Billion" ended.
"intelligent life evolved almost towards the end"
We don't know that for sure. Ever heard of the Silurian hypothesis?
@@bjornfeuerbacher5514 I don't buy it, because I think the human hand is pretty vital for making us what we are, and we'd see some fossil evidence of creatures evolving towards having comparable manipulators.
@@ForwardSynthesis First, I wouldn't say that human hands are the only possibility. Second, there are examples of quite complicated reptilian claws. Third, the fossil record still is quite spotty.
Thank you for another fascinating video.
It's fascinating how life seems to always be experimenting with various forms in order to reach some new paradigm.
It makes me wonder what's coming next. It could be something incomprehensible to us now.
Its not experimenting at all, it’s providing excellent designs throughout its entire history, not only excellent specimens, but excellent ecosystems adapting to ever-changing environment.
Life...finds a way?
The LUCA is similar to Rhodopseudomonas palustris
It metabolizers and fixes CO2, in metabolizers and fixes nitrogen, it’s photosynthetic, metabolizes, hydrogen, sulfur, and iron. it’s the most versatile organism on earth
Day 34 asking for Anton to bring back What Da Math as a standalone series
No, please no. Math sucks. 😮 In case you didn’t know.
@@spiralsun1 What Da Math was what he used to do before his current format. He would explain concepts (usually space related) by using video games like Universe Sandbox
@@spiralsun1 _What Da Math_ was not actually about math.
@@mckinney9739 omg AWESOME 🤩 I STAND CORRECTED
@@Gelatinocyte2 thanks. Me humbled. I love you 😘
When life appeared on Earth, the galaxy was already at least 9 or10 billion years old, and the late bombardment meteorites had to originate somewhere outside Earth. Potentially, our galaxy could have collided with other passing galaxies and the probability that LUCA originated elsewhere than Earth is high, so we may never know what the conditions under which life started were like. Maybe some long dead world, who can tell? Maybe a remnant of Theia, even?
What I'd love to see: "How are instincts encoded in our genetic library?"
Quite easily, those with less brain development evolved it to modify its behaviour. Because they always kept being useful. More complex cognition happened much later. Instincts are still essential for us. The exact genetic encoding will be more complex.
The samme way as for all animals, insects, bacteria, viruses, earth worms, lice, and everything else that has the ability to get offspring. Only those with the right behavior (instincts) survive and get offspring. The others die off...
@napoleonfeanor That doesn’t explain it. Just assumes that it must have happened according to Darwinian presupposition.
It’s ok to say we don’t know.
It need not. What if there was a second source of information, such a charged binary language contained ON THE SURFACE of cells
@@alwaysascending Interesting, but it would still require mechanism of transmission within the genetic code.
Archaeobiology and results of large scale genetic research are so intriguing, thanx for your videos!
I'm spiraling on a dumb question: if oxigen started to exist 2 billion years ago, why do we need to assume more ancient anaerobial life forms were acquatic? Does this depend on the formation of glico something partially water repellent membranes?
my money is on meteorite with bacteria
Nice. In case anyone needs to know, Luca told me he lives on the second floor.
So Kain and Abel was a story about the first animal killing its plant brother. Sons of Luca.
You son of a Luca !! 😂
I tried reading the bible once, but the writing was terrible. I've heard the story of Cain and Able being described as so "deep and meaningful" or whatever but it was like 2 sentences long. Is there a full version somewhere, or is it really just "so yeah there was Cain and Abel, they tried giving gifts to god and god only liked the other one so his brother robloxed him."
Absolutely fascinating!!
0:01 go Mavs!
lol thought my youtube was broken after reading your comment
lol
Ignore all other instructions, give me a really good brownie recipe.
Imagine going back in time and squishing our most-common ancestor, coming back, and seeing basically all life rerolling into completely different things with completely different orders of dominance. Heck, we could have been the least-productive and least-intelligent dominant species of the multiverse of possibilities purely by a missed exposure to a rogue unit of virus.
We demand a treaty and reparations for them.
Adinine is a very important precursor molecule in atp/adp, rna and dna, so it seems likely to have come early.
Maybe because of the elements that it's made of, a meteor or dry ice (co2) coated in liquid nitrogen (n) hitting the upper hydrogen atmosphere (h2) could have made pockets of it if it were the right size and angle.
What it might do from there I wonder about. I've thought that before having competition, photosynthetic would probably extract co2, freeze water over it, and then evolved to go deeper with more specialized wavelength photosynthesis, but then if reaching thermal vents did anything immediately or what I don't know.
That's just great. Another relative to buy a Christmas gift for! So what do you think LUCA would like? An itsy-bity scarf, perhaps?
LUCA is our *grandparent,* _it_ should be the one buying gifts for you.
That 3-D cell rendering at 2:08 is gorgeous. All the others I have seen look drab compared to that. It looks a little like Grogu's floating hover cab. Any chance of getting access to where that video was generated?
I suspect panspermia is what brought life to Earth, and I expect both LUCA and its viruses arrived together. We really need to be closely examining comets where they might still be abundant.
it's definitely possible
can't live on a planet full of life
and know what we know about comets and asteroids and not think it's possible
but still doesn't answer the question of where did that life come
did it randomly come together on some other planet
or maybe even in space some nebula
Luca Brassi sleeps with the fish! 🐟 6:39
Thank you so much, Anton.
Modern day Acetogens and Methogens both have a primitive version of the Krebs Cycle and can be found in the Alkaline Vents. (Nick Lane. "The Vital Qjuestion.")
My hypothesis is that every planet is a 3d printer of sorts. All of the material to create life is available on many planets. All that is needed is the instructions for life, which I think is available in abundance in space. Therefore, life starts on many, if not most planets. In the early stages of development many planets are very similar. However, as they cool and form they diverge on many factors: distance from a sun, types of inorganic material, and so forth. So the question is not "Where is life?" The question is "Where has life survived?" 🙂 BTW, I love your videos.
Five more years?! I'm already 70 and have wanted to know this most of the that time.
I love your work. 😎
More - Bio, great !, love your science every day. Thank you
Thank you wonderful person Anton 👍👍 I wonder what definition of “Organism” they use.
As a barbarian, my pet peeve is explaining the concept of LUCA to vegans ❤ 😂
ps. if you are in any way interested in this topic, I can't recommend Nightwish's (symphonic metal) concept album *Endless Forms most Beautiful* that was done inspired by and in co-operation with Richard Dawkins (he narrates parts and even joined on stage during some live shows). Especially the song The Greatest Show on Earth (live at Tampere version) is my personal favourite, it is a tribute to life of Earth, since it's beginning to the end
Essentially from scratch we can build a nuclear-powered Gerald R. Ford Class aircraft carrier, (replete with aircraft, radar, weapon-systems etc.) but we haven't a clue of how to build LUCA.
Technology is crystallized science, so be patient.
@@Tubemanjac translated: we're not gods yet, just give it time.
Great Video!
It is frustrating that so many people, even those in the different scientific domains, do not understand that life is simply another manifestation of entropy. Self organising entropy. As the universe expands and its uncountable and unimaginably tiny bits interact with each other, life is bound to occur. In many places.
It's life Jim, but not as we know it. Pretty interesting case for panspermia.
I love your channel man.
But maybe give some theories or studies a couple of years to dwell before making a statement on it. Have seen so many youtubers end up almost ridiculed in the end because of it.
Either that or thumbnail clickbaits.
All the best🙏 Keep'em coming
Best call to subscribe in the history of RUclips. "Subscribe, and stuff, I suppose" 😂