LUCA: Our Last Universal Common Ancestor #biology #science
Community Score: 50% | 65.3K views | 10mo
0 community ratings: null thumbs up, null thumbs down
An interdisciplinary group applied the latest tricks of phylogenetics — using genes and genomes to build evolutionary trees — to trace all of modern life back to our shared ancestor. This ancient cell, or population of cells, is known as LUCA, which stands for “last universal common ancestor,” the one from which everything alive today emerged. The work suggested that LUCA was a surprisingly complex cell and dated LUCA to some 4.2 billion years ago — earlier than researchers had thought. Read the Quanta article: https://www.quantamagazine.org/all-life-on-earth-today-descended-from-a-single-cell-meet-luca-20241120/ --------- - VISIT our website: https://www.quantamagazine.org - LIKE us on Facebook: / quantanews - FOLLOW us Twitter: / quantamagazine Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation: https://www.simonsfoundation.org
Tags: science, quanta, quanta magazine, explainer, science explainer, science video, educational video, biology, evolution
More from Quanta Magazine
- Quantum Computers, Explained With Quantum Physics — Score: 50%
- Biggest Breakthroughs in Computer Science: 2025 — Score: 50%
- 4D Topology Is Weird #math #science — Score: 50%
- 2025's Biggest Breakthroughs in Mathematics — Score: 50%
- 2025's Biggest Breakthroughs in Physics — Score: 50%
- How AI Designs New Proteins #science #biology — Score: 50%