Last universal ancestor

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The forefather or English Last Universal Ancestor (LUA, as the "last universal ancestor ") is the - hypothetical - last common ancestor of all living creatures today. This is predicted by the monophyletic origin theories.

In this context of LCA (Last Common Ancestor, " last common ancestor " ) or LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor, "last universal common ancestor " ) spoken. It is assumed in these hypotheses assume that this archetype has lived all of today's life in front of at least 3.5 billion years ago, ie in the late Hadean or early Archean.

It is believed that this last common ancestor had those characteristics of organisms living today that these are common: cell structure, DNA, the genetic code, as well as mRNA, tRNA and ribosomal mediated translation. The original genetic code could probably be made ​​. In addition, it is believed that the forefather was thermophilic, what is controversial, and that its cell wall components contained murein, a common cell wall component of modern bacteria.

Notes on possible false conclusions:

The construction of dendrograms ( tree diagrams ), on the basis of genetic distance between all existing cell types, shows a relatively early split between archaebacteria ( extremo phil ) are highly resistant to extreme living conditions, and the other life forms. This has led to some conjectures about the fact that LUA could have developed in such extreme ecosystems ( inter alia deep back).

All his contemporaries have since become extinct; only lua's genetic heritage would have survived to this day. In contrast, propagated Carl Woese that our genetic pre- LUCA heritage came from a variety of organisms, as only one species: Biofilm theory, horizontal gene transfer.

A statistical study from 2010 found that life most likely descended from a single common ancestor. A single common ancestor is then 102 860 times more likely than several.