All Present-day Life Arose From A Single Ancestor

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/59133/title/All_present-day_life_arose_from_a_single_origin

by pg • 16 years ago

48 13 16 years ago

But even more likely was single-ancestor with some gene mingling. So a bit of both.

Seems like a bit of a false dichotomy going on here as this is a "degree of" question and not an either-or question (If I understood the article correctly)

LeBleu• 16 years ago

No, it is two different dichotomies. One is one-ancestor vs. multi-ancestor, with the first being correct. The second is no gene transfer between descendants vs. gene transfer between descendants, with the second being correct. So there was only one species to begin with, but then later, after it diverged into multiple species, those branches traded genes back and forth.

Alex39172• 16 years ago

"So there was only one species to begin with"

The idea that all life shares a common ancestor does not mean that there was only one species to begin with. There could have been many species who contributed genetic material to a common ancestor, and then eventually died out. The article is poorly written because it doesn't make it clear whether the gene swapping occurred before or after the common ancestor.

chronomex• 16 years ago

Nitpick: You say "correct" where the more precise phrasing would be something like "far more probable".

pcof• 16 years ago

We could call her Bacteria Zero and build a whole religion around her life and times...

pierrefar• 16 years ago

Surely Bacterium Zero?

ZenzerNet• 16 years ago

Deus Ex Bacteria. Shirley, this ancestor could be referred to as "God".

sigzero• 16 years ago

Ummm....no.

latortuga• 16 years ago

Truly the father (mother?) of all life!

mkramlich• 16 years ago

this was covered on The Onion already last week:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/7-million-people-direct-des...

altano• 16 years ago

Ohhh, occasion to post my favorite first line of a book the second time in so many days! Neal Stephenson, first line of chapter 1 of Cryptonomicon:

"Let's set the existence-of-god issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate. After about three billion years of this sometimes zany, frequently tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, Godfrey Waterhouse IV was born, in Murdo, South Dakota, to Blanche, the wife of a Congregational preacher named Bunyan Waterhouse. Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo--which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead."

All Present-day Life Arose From A Single Ancestor

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