The organism is single-celled, technically called an archaeon. But on a genetic level, it also has what the researchers called a starter kit that could have given rise to complex genetic and cellular organisms like animals, plants and fungi, collectively called eukaryotes.
The newly found organism was dubbed Lokiarchaeota and nicknamed Loki. The researchers, from Uppsala University in Sweden, were shocked by what they found in Loki.
“When we started to have a more in-depth look at the genes of this new Loki genome, we found that something was strange about it quite early on,” Ettema told the Washington Post. “We found genes that were much more like eukaryotes.
“First we had to convince ourselves it was true. And once we were certain, we did further analysis of the genes. And it turns out that they’re quite special.”
At one point long ago, Ettema told the Post, complex organisms and Loki went their seperate ways: one became life as we know it and the Lokis of the world stayed stuck in the mud.
From the paper: “Our results provide strong support for hypotheses in which the eukaryotic host evolved from a bona fide archaeon, and demonstrate that many components that underpin eukaryote-specific features were already present in that ancestor. This provided the host with a rich genomic “starter-kit” to support the increase in t he cellular and genomic complexity that is characteristic of eukaryotes.”
From Discovery News
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