LUCA is dated to about 4.2 Ga by phylogenomic analysis
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Moody and colleagues published a phylogenomic reconstruction placing the last universal common ancestor at approximately 4.2 billion years ago and inferring a genome of roughly 2.5 megabases coding on the order of 2,600 proteins, with an anaerobic, probably acetogenic metabolism and an early form of immune defence against viruses. Two implications matter for this Journey. The first is that if the estimate holds, LUCA existed within a few hundred million years of the Moon-forming impact, leaving very little time for the chemistry that preceded it. The second is that LUCA is inferred to have been complex and ecologically embedded, so it was not the first cell and cannot mark the origin of life. Molecular dates of this age carry large model dependencies and this one is not a settled result.
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- LUCA — the last universal common ancestorconcerns
- Molecular clock datingconcerns
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