Skip to content
RichseenAtlasAtlasSign in

LUCA is dated to about 4.2 Ga by phylogenomic analysis

node

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.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.

Read in · 1

Evidence · 1
Timeline

No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.

Connections · 2
Assembled narrative · 1

An assembled narrative is available for this object.

Observed changes · 0

No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.

Actions

Read the assembled narrativeContinue in StudioOpen TwinTwin does not start a decision from this kind of object.ShareSaveSaved objects are part of the authenticated projection, which is declared and not yet built.

/atlas?object=EVT_MOODY_LUCA_2024