ArticleNature ecology & evolution2024
The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 112 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
112 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Hadean timeline for the emergence of the RNA World.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Diversity of electron-bifurcating COScience advances · 2026Article
- The Emergence of an Urable Earth: How Early Planetary Evolution Shaped the Chemical Window for Life's Origin.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Emergence of biosignatures on Earth and implications for life detection.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Molecular assembly as a universal biosignature measurable by mass spectrometry.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The history of enzyme evolution embedded in metabolism.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Phylogenetic reconciliation supports a methanogenic ancestor of the Archaea and a derived origin for host-associated lineages.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Intermediate stages in the origin of metabolism at a phosphorylating hydrothermal vent.Science advances · 2026Article
- Reply to Szöllősi and Williams: The observation threshold mitigates the bias of transient genes on ancestral reconstruction.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Improved gene tree inference from removing alignment errors both from focal genes and when training substitution models.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Semiartificial COChemical reviews · 2026Review
- The Emergence of Life in the Light of Evolution.ArXiv · 2026Article
- Interface swapping orchestrates carbon transfer in the archaeal acetyl-CoA decarbonylase/synthase.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The chemistry of habitable oceans in the Solar system.Nature communications · 2026Review
- A Noncontiguous Code for RNA-Guided DNA Recognition Preceded CRISPR.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Replicating lipid micelles: a feasible precursor to the origin of life and the earliest appearance of genomes.Human genomics · 2026Review
- Abiotic sources of fixed nitrogen sustained early ecosystems for several hundred million years after the origin of life.Science advances · 2026Article
- Divergent evolution of the PRPS enzymes across the tree of life.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Early Evolution of the Prokaryotic Transcription Factor Repertoire.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Article
52 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
19 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The nature of the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), its age and its impact on the Earth system have been the subject of vigorous debate across diverse disciplines, often based on disparate data and methods. Age estimates for LUCA are usually based on the fossil record, varying with every reinterpretation. The nature of LUCA's metabolism has proven equally contentious, with some attributing all core metabolisms to LUCA, whereas others reconstruct a simpler life form dependent on geochemistry. Here we infer that LUCA lived ~4.2 Ga (4.09-4.33 Ga) through divergence time analysis of pre-LUCA gene duplicates, calibrated using microbial fossils and isotope records under a new cross-bracing implementation. Phylogenetic reconciliation suggests that LUCA had a genome of at least 2.5 Mb (2.49-2.99 Mb), encoding around 2,600 proteins, comparable to modern prokaryotes. Our results suggest LUCA was a prokaryote-grade anaerobic acetogen that possessed an early immune system. Although LUCA is sometimes perceived as living in isolation, we infer LUCA to have been part of an established ecological system. The metabolism of LUCA would have provided a niche for other microbial community members and hydrogen recycling by atmospheric photochemistry could have supported a modestly productive early ecosystem.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.