The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) is considered to be the first true life form and the common ancestor of all living things.
Previous understanding of the LUCA indicated that the life form was a very simple assemblage of the basic parts necessary to be considered a life form but new research indicates LUCA was more complex that previously thought.
The study that was reported in the journal Biology Direct on October 5, 2011, indicates that LUCA had all the necessary components to be considered a true cell.
This new development is based on several years of research centered on the existence of polyphosphate energy sources in all life forms and the first discovery that a polyphosphate organelle exists in bacteria. Previously bacteria were considered not to have organelles.
The researchers conclude that "This organelle, the evidence indicates, is present in the three domains of life: bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes (plants, animals, fungi, algae and everything else)."
The conclusion is further substantiated by the findings that a protein enzyme (called a vacuolar proton pyrophosphatase, or V-H+PPase) exists in all life forms and has since LUCA. The most probable scenario is suggested that this enzyme system was incorporated in all life forms from the dawn of LUCA.
This is the first determination of a common enzyme that exists in all life forms and was present for use in the earliest life forms.
University of Illinois crop sciences professor Manfredo Seufferheld led the study with co-author Gustavo Caetano-Anollés, a professor of crop sciences and an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois and James Whitfield, a professor of entomology at Illinois and a co-author on the study. The study team also included Kyung Mo Kim, of the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology; and Alejandro Valerio, of the Museum of Biological Diversity in Columbus, Ohio.
Paper
"Evolution of Vacuolar Proton Pyrophosphatase Domains and Volutin Granules: Clues Into the Early Evolutionary Origin of the Acidocalcisomes"
The research was reviewed at the Eureka Alert web site on October 5, 2011.
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