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Looking for the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)
Genomic sequences across diverse species seem to align towards a common ancestry, eventually implying that eons ago some universal antecedent organism would have lived on the face of Earth. However, when evolution is understood not only as a biological process but as a general thermodynamic process,...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2012
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3899962/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24704844 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes3010081 |
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author | Koskela, Minna Annila, Arto |
author_facet | Koskela, Minna Annila, Arto |
author_sort | Koskela, Minna |
collection | PubMed |
description | Genomic sequences across diverse species seem to align towards a common ancestry, eventually implying that eons ago some universal antecedent organism would have lived on the face of Earth. However, when evolution is understood not only as a biological process but as a general thermodynamic process, it becomes apparent that the quest for the last universal common ancestor is unattainable. Ambiguities in alignments are unavoidable because the driving forces and paths of evolution cannot be separated from each other. Thus tracking down life’s origin is by its nature a non-computable task. The thermodynamic tenet clarifies that evolution is a path-dependent process of least-time consumption of free energy. The natural process is without a demarcation line between animate and inanimate. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3899962 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-38999622014-03-26 Looking for the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) Koskela, Minna Annila, Arto Genes (Basel) Article Genomic sequences across diverse species seem to align towards a common ancestry, eventually implying that eons ago some universal antecedent organism would have lived on the face of Earth. However, when evolution is understood not only as a biological process but as a general thermodynamic process, it becomes apparent that the quest for the last universal common ancestor is unattainable. Ambiguities in alignments are unavoidable because the driving forces and paths of evolution cannot be separated from each other. Thus tracking down life’s origin is by its nature a non-computable task. The thermodynamic tenet clarifies that evolution is a path-dependent process of least-time consumption of free energy. The natural process is without a demarcation line between animate and inanimate. MDPI 2012-01-09 /pmc/articles/PMC3899962/ /pubmed/24704844 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes3010081 Text en © 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Koskela, Minna Annila, Arto Looking for the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) |
title | Looking for the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) |
title_full | Looking for the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) |
title_fullStr | Looking for the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) |
title_full_unstemmed | Looking for the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) |
title_short | Looking for the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) |
title_sort | looking for the last universal common ancestor (luca) |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3899962/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24704844 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes3010081 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT koskelaminna lookingforthelastuniversalcommonancestorluca AT annilaarto lookingforthelastuniversalcommonancestorluca |