The Origin(s) of Cell(s): Pre-Darwinian Evolution from FUCAs to LUCA : To Carl Woese (1928-2012), for His Conceptual Breakthrough of Cellular Evolution

Overview

Journal J Mol Evol

Specialty Biochemistry

Date 2021 Jun 26

PMID 34173011

Authors

Shiping Tang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The coming of the Last Universal Cellular Ancestor (LUCA) was the singular watershed event in the making of the biotic world. If the coming of LUCA marked the crossing of the "Darwinian Threshold", then pre-LUCA evolution must have been Pre-Darwinian and at least partly non-Darwinian. But how did Pre-Darwinian evolution before LUCA actually operate? I broaden our understanding of the central mechanism of biological evolution (i.e., variation-selection-inheritance) and then extend this broadened understanding to its natural starting point: the origin(s) of the First Universal Cellular Ancestors (FUCAs) before LUCA. My hypothesis centers upon vesicles' making-and-remaking as variation and competition as selection. More specifically, I argue that vesicles' acquisition and merger, via breaking-and-repacking, proto-endocytosis, proto-endosymbiosis, and other similar processes had been a central force of both variation and selection in the pre-Darwinian epoch. These new perspectives shed important new light upon the origin of FUCAs and their subsequent evolution into LUCA.

Citing Articles

The Origin(s) of LUCA: Computer Simulation of a New Theory.

Tang S, Gao M Life (Basel). 2025; 15(1).

PMID: 39860015 PMC: 11766493. DOI: 10.3390/life15010075.

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