Is there anyway to know what the actual ancestor looked like? Thanks to HGT isn’t it pretty difficult to determine when a gene entered the ancestral line?
HGT?
Horizontal Gene Transfer, possibly?
Strange, tentacled microbe may resemble ancestor of complex life
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Re: Strange, tentacled microbe may resemble ancestor of complex life
#12Me: “Grandpapa, is that you?” Tentacled microbe: ::Cthulhu noises::
Flying Tentacle Monster ?
Re: Strange, tentacled microbe may resemble ancestor of complex life
#13Is there anyway to know what the actual ancestor looked like? Thanks to HGT isn’t it pretty difficult to determine when a gene entered the ancestral line?
HGT?
Horizontal Gene Transfer. Bacteria pass useful genes to one another. think of it like a weird and simple form of talking: if a bacteria enters a new environment and meets other bacteria it “asks” the bacteria in the new environment for useful genes. I’m definitely not doing this justice but it’s fascinating.
Anyway our high level understanding of mammalian/plant evolution (or the ability to go back in time from it) doesn’t quite apply to bacteria.
Re: Strange, tentacled microbe may resemble ancestor of complex life
#14Re: Strange, tentacled microbe may resemble ancestor of complex life
#15One fact that still blows my mind is that into the 1990's, there were something like 12,000 known prokaryotic species, and microbiologists estimated anywhere from 100,000 to a million were still undiscovered, since they didn't like to grow in a Petri dish. But with the advent of PCR based techniques, that number grew to one trillion. Not only whole new phyla but two entire new branches of life (DPANN and CPR) were discovered in the early 2000's gold rush, and microbiology and mycology are still struggling with how to classify and organize these organisms, along with foundational questions like what 'known species' even means. It's a pretty cool time to follow those fields.
tl;dr we failed to notice 99.999% of life on Earth until about twenty years ago.
Re: Strange, tentacled microbe may resemble ancestor of complex life
#16One fact that still blows my mind is that into the 1990's, there were something like 12,000 known prokaryotic species, and microbiologists estimated anywhere from 100,000 to a million were still undiscovered, since they didn't like to grow in a Petri dish. But with the advent of PCR based techniques, that number grew to one trillion . Not only whole new phyla but two entire new branches of life (DPANN and CPR) were d…
> A recent estimate of the global number of prokaryotic species is 2.2–4.3 million [110], down from previous potentially flawed estimates of trillions [111]
From this Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41396-021-00941-x
Re: Strange, tentacled microbe may resemble ancestor of complex life
#17Those aren't tentacles; tentacles are motile.
Re: Strange, tentacled microbe may resemble ancestor of complex life
#18One fact that still blows my mind is that into the 1990's, there were something like 12,000 known prokaryotic species, and microbiologists estimated anywhere from 100,000 to a million were still undiscovered, since they didn't like to grow in a Petri dish. But with the advent of PCR based techniques, that number grew to one trillion . Not only whole new phyla but two entire new branches of life (DPANN and CPR) were d…
> A recent estimate of the global number of prokaryotic species is 2.2–4.3 million [110], down from previous potentially flawed estimates of trillions [111] From this Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41396-021-00941-x
See the cited paper by Locey and Lennon (https://doi.org/10.1186/s13062-020-00261-8) for a counterargument. The issue comes down to mathematical modeling of biodiversity and microbiologists are fighting about it. The fact that dozens of new phyla and two entire branches of life were discovered in the past 20 years is not disputed by either side.
A good backgrounder on this topic is "Assessing the global phylum level diversity within the bacterial domain: A review", https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jare.2014.10.005
Re: Strange, tentacled microbe may resemble ancestor of complex life
#19One fact that still blows my mind is that into the 1990's, there were something like 12,000 known prokaryotic species, and microbiologists estimated anywhere from 100,000 to a million were still undiscovered, since they didn't like to grow in a Petri dish. But with the advent of PCR based techniques, that number grew to one trillion . Not only whole new phyla but two entire new branches of life (DPANN and CPR) were d…
TIL a salt water spring at -5C temperature exists (and extremophiles live in it):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Heiberg_Island#Lost_Hamme...