Version 1
: Received: 2 June 2018 / Approved: 4 June 2018 / Online: 4 June 2018 (11:17:58 CEST)
Version 2
: Received: 22 July 2019 / Approved: 23 July 2019 / Online: 23 July 2019 (08:13:32 CEST)
How to cite:
Prosdocimi, F.; José, M.V.; Farias, S.T.D. Be Introduced to the First Universal Common Ancestor (FUCA): The Great-Grandmother of LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). Preprints.org2018, 2018060035. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201806.0035.v1.
Prosdocimi, F.; José, M.V.; Farias, S.T.D. Be Introduced to the First Universal Common Ancestor (FUCA): The Great-Grandmother of LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). Preprints.org 2018, 2018060035. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201806.0035.v1.
Cite as:
Prosdocimi, F.; José, M.V.; Farias, S.T.D. Be Introduced to the First Universal Common Ancestor (FUCA): The Great-Grandmother of LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). Preprints.org2018, 2018060035. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201806.0035.v1.
Prosdocimi, F.; José, M.V.; Farias, S.T.D. Be Introduced to the First Universal Common Ancestor (FUCA): The Great-Grandmother of LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). Preprints.org 2018, 2018060035. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201806.0035.v1.
Abstract
The existence of a common ancestor to all living organisms in Earth is a necessary corollary of Darwin idea of common ancestry. The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) has been normally considered as the ancestor of cellular organisms that originated the three domains of life: Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya. Recent studies about the nature of LUCA indicate that this first organism should present hundreds of genes and a complex metabolism. Trying to bring another of Darwin ideas into the origins of life discussion, we went back into the prebiotic chemistry trying to understand how LUCA could be originated under gradualist assumptions. Along this line of reasoning, it became clear to us that the definition of another ancestral should be of particular relevance to the understanding about the emergence of biological systems. Together with the view of biology as a language for chemical translation, on which proteins are encoded into nucleic acids polymers, we glimpse a point in the deep past on which this Translation mechanism could have taken place. Thus, we propose the emergence of this process shared by all biological systems as a point of interest and propose the existence of this non-cellular entity named FUCA, as the First Universal Common Ancestor. FUCA was born in the very instant on which RNA-world replicators started to be capable to catalyze the bonding of amino acids into oligopeptides. FUCA has been considered mature when the translation system apparatus has been assembled together with the establishment of a primeval, possibly error-prone genetic code. This is FUCA, the great-grandmother of LUCA.
Keywords
origin of life; LUCA; FUCA; RNA World; PTC; Archaea; translation system
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
