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Was LUCA a Hyperthermophilic Prokaryote? The Impact-Bottleneck Hypothesis Revisited

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Astrobiology and Cuatro Ciénegas Basin as an Analog of Early Earth

Part of the book series: Cuatro Ciénegas Basin: An Endangered Hyperdiverse Oasis ((CUCIBA))

Abstract

In the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote “The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth.” Modern comparative genomics has revealed that the intuition of Darwin was correct. A set of highly conserved genes and cellular functions indicate that all life on Earth is related by common ancestry. These genes were inherited from the last universal common ancestor or LUCA. The functions coded by these genes suggest that LUCA was a rather complex cell already endowed with a genetic code and a protein translation apparatus. One of the questions regarding the nature of LUCA is whether it was a hyperthermophile. Here, we review recent evidence derived from the molecular fossil record on the temperature preferences of LUCA. We suggest that current evidence on the nature of LUCA and its immediate predecessors are compatible with the impact-bottleneck hypothesis – the proposal that during the early evolution of life, a meteoritic impact eliminated all life on Earth except for prokaryotes capable of living at high temperatures. If our interpretation of the data is correct, it would indicate that early life was resilient to the rough environmental conditions of the Archean, a relevant result from the point of view of astrobiology because it would exemplify the persistence of life in harsh environments.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank María González for critical reading of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ingeniería Genética, CINVESTAV, Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico

    Gilberto P. Morales & Luis Delaye

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  1. Gilberto P. Morales
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  2. Luis Delaye
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Correspondence to Luis Delaye .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico

    Valeria Souza

  2. Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico

    Antígona Segura

  3. Space Life Sciences Lab, University of Florida, Merritt Island, FL, USA

    Jamie S. Foster

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Morales, G.P., Delaye, L. (2020). Was LUCA a Hyperthermophilic Prokaryote? The Impact-Bottleneck Hypothesis Revisited. In: Souza, V., Segura, A., Foster, J. (eds) Astrobiology and Cuatro Ciénegas Basin as an Analog of Early Earth. Cuatro Ciénegas Basin: An Endangered Hyperdiverse Oasis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46087-7_3

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