Chuck Darwin<p>Age estimates for <a href="https://c.im/tags/LUCA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>LUCA</span></a> <br>(the 🔸Last Universal Common Ancestor of all life 🔸)<br>are usually based on the fossil record, varying with every reinterpretation. <br>The nature of LUCA’s metabolism has proven equally contentious, <br>with some attributing all core metabolisms to LUCA, <br>whereas others reconstruct a simpler life form dependent on geochemistry. <br>Here we infer that LUCA lived<br> ~4.2 Ga(billion years ago)<br> through divergence time analysis of pre-LUCA gene duplicates, <br>calibrated using microbial fossils and isotope records under a new cross-bracing implementation. <br>Phylogenetic reconciliation suggests that LUCA had a genome of at least 2.5 Mb (2.49–2.99 Mb), <br>encoding around 2,600 proteins, <br>comparable to modern prokaryotes. <br>Our results suggest LUCA was a prokaryote-grade anaerobic acetogen <br>that possessed an early immune system. <br>Although LUCA is sometimes perceived as living in isolation, <br>we infer LUCA to have been part of an established ecological system. <br>The metabolism of LUCA would have provided a niche for other microbial community members <br>and hydrogen recycling by atmospheric photochemistry could have supported a modestly productive early ecosystem.<br><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02461-1" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">nature.com/articles/s41559-024</span><span class="invisible">-02461-1</span></a></p>