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The Universal Ancestor and the Ancestor of Bacteria Were Hyperthermophiles

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Abstract

The definition of the node of the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is justified in a topology of the unrooted universal tree. This definition allows previous analyses based on paralogous proteins to be extended to orthologous ones. In particular, the use of a thermophily index (based on the amino acids’ propensity to enter the [hyper] thermophile proteins more frequently) and its correlation with the optimal growth temperature of the various organisms allow inferences to be made on the habitat in which the LUCA lived. The reconstruction of ancestral sequences by means of the maximum likelihood method and their attribution to the set of mesophilic or hyperthermophilic sequences have led to the following conclusions: the LUCA was a hyperthermophile “organism,” as were the ancestors of the Archaea and Bacteria domains, while the ancestor of the Eukarya domain was a mesophile. These conclusions are independent of the presence of hyperthermophile bacteria in the sample of sequences used in the analysis and are therefore independent of whether or not these are the first lines of divergence in the Bacteria domain, as observed in the topology of the universal tree of ribosomal RNA. These conclusions are thus more easily understood under the hypothesis that the origin of life took place at a high temperature.

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Acknowledgements

The cost of this article was partly covered by funds made available by the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana project “Extremophilic Archaea as model systems to study origin and evolution of early organisms: molecular mechanisms of adaptation to extreme physicochemical conditions,” Contract I/R/365/02.

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  1. Institute of Genetics and Biophysics “Adriano Buzzati Traverso”, CNR, Via G. Marconi 10, 80125 Naples, Napoli, Italy

    Massimo Di Giulio

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Di Giulio, M. The Universal Ancestor and the Ancestor of Bacteria Were Hyperthermophiles . J Mol Evol 57, 721–730 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-003-2522-6

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