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Organism Closest To Original "Tree of Life" Discovered
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have discovered a benign algae eating protozoan in a lake near Oslo, Norway whose gene sequence does not match any known organism living on earth today, and this beasty combines genetic characteristics across plant, animal, and fungal kingdoms. It is believed to be the closest living organism to the original organisms that spawned all animal life on earth."
So what's the /. UID of this thing?
Does it use Vim or Emacs?
but I'm more interested in knowing if this new form of life can be weaponized?
and eat Windows for breakfast?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I feel like in a very bad light bulb joke, along the lines of "what would $group do with it".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here's the paper.
And to ruin all of the surprise: it's believed to be about a billion years removed from other known protists. That's about the same age as multicellular life. Archaea are more distant from us than these protists.
This is more baseless conjecture than anything, but its blend of unusual genes most likely suggests that it is the sole (optimized) survivor of a larger ecosystem of similar strains, which may have exchanged DNA through some horizontal gene transfer mechanism in the past. The relatedness to a distant organism in Tibet implies that at least one of these species was once geographically ubiquitous, or spread through some other means, and may have blended into its surroundings there.
The measurement of the organism's "age" is based on the sequence of an extremely conserved gene that codes for a part of a very important cell component, the ribosome. That measurement reflects how many times the sequence has been altered since it last matched a suspected common ancestor with its nearest relatives. The researchers never said that it's been essentially the same organism for a billion years (although it looks that way in the summary and MSNBC article); since they only analysed live samples, not fossilized ones, there's no way of knowing (and I'd be sceptical about any claims that said we could sequence billion-year-old DNA.) At any rate, analytical genomics shows us that for the sequence to stay the same for so long, the environment would have to be completely static and the genes very specifically optimised, which was almost certainly not the case due to historical climate trends. The rate of sequence change is very reliable on a large scale.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Organism Closest To Original "Tree of Life" Discovered
Eating of its fruit doesn't confer immortality per se, but many congenital defects abate, the skin regains elastin and the libido is enhanced significantly.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
Nah, we already know what fruit the Tree of Life gave. It's the banana—haven't you seen the totally informative and 100% factual explanation of how perfect it is?
...
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I eagerly await to see how many moderators and respondents do not realise that this post is sarcastic.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Oh dear.
I'm not sure which was worse: the title, the reasoning, or the fact that I counted the number of single entendres in the low single digits.
Love the way he aims it, phaser-like, at the viewer as he completes his delivery of the opening line.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
It's a eukaryote, which is not at the base of the "tree of life," by a long shot. Neat to have a possible basal eukaryote though.
I can't say I know a great deal about this area but it strikes me that "gene sequence does not match any known organism living on earth today" is not appropriate, seeing as we know so very little about what is crawling around the deepest parts of our oceans. It could well be this Norwegian fellow is quite ordinary.
I had the original tree of life growing in my back yard. And I know that you're not close to it.
God.
It might be a basal eukaryote, but that does not make it basal life, i.e. bacteria and archaea were present on Earth for ~2 billion years before eukaryotes came about..
Does this mean we are going to be overun with Pak Protectors.
The research may or may not be ridiculous. The reporting on it is, but that's journalism for you.
They compared its genome with those in hundreds of databases around the world, with little luck. In all that looking they "have only found a partial match with a gene sequence in Tibet.
Is it part of the Rinpoche system? The next Dali Lama perhaps?
Silence is a state of mime.
...and I keep reading it wrong?! Orga*NI*sm damnit... Orga*NI*sm! Read either way there is some truth to the "tree of life" thing but still.
Hail Atlantis! "Way down...below the ocean..."
You are welcome on my lawn.
But what does it taste like?
'Your brain is God.' -- Dr. Timothy Leary
The cited article has so many mistakes, it is frightening. I know that protists are esoteric, but it probably would have been better to get a better consultant to read over the article before it was posted.
"It is believed to be the closest living organism to the original organisms that spawned all animal life on earth."
Of course, God created all of the animals and other creeping things and gave us (who are not animals) dominion over all the other living things.These little organisms they found in the lake in Norway are no exception to what God created and gave us dominion over. Everything is there for a reason... probably an ecological reason. Scientists need to stop pretending they know everything.
GOD created all life after He created the heavens and the earth!
a bikini clad slime mold on page six?
that would be worse
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
1.Assuming we all evolved from a universal common ancestor we are all equidistant to the original tree of life
2.The organism did not evolve x years ago...it has and will continue to evolve throughout it's existence
wow.
i would love to be on the team looking at that.
sigh, such is life.
From The Herp Derp Summary:
this beasty combines genetic characteristics across plant, animal, and fungal kingdoms
This is never actually mentioned in the article, in fact...
From TFA (emphasis mine):
They found it doesn't genetically fit into any of the previously discovered kingdoms of life. It's an organism with membrane-bound internal structures, called a eukaryote, but genetically it isn't an animal, plant, fungi, algae or protist (the five main groups of eukaryotes).
To me, at least, that doesn't say that it necessarily has characteristics from all of those kingdoms, and certainly doesn't imply that it "combines" them.
Swampthing!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
a bikini clad slime mold on page six?
that would be worse
Speak for yourself.
[Snap, snap, grin, grin....]
Regards,
Mr. Arthur Frampton, A Lonely Old Slime Mold In A Trench Coat
(Sorry, I found a seeded Monty Python torrent on the weekend)
I guess He wasn't so keen on us eating mangoes then. And where did He put the easy-open tab on the cow?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
If this is what all life originated from how did the original organism stay the same over millions of years but at the same time evolve into all living life with no signs at all of anything intermediate?
There was once a family of spearmakers. They were very good at making spears, and people would come from miles around to buy their spears. Because they were so good, the family prospered and multiplied. Then someone invented the sword, and the market for spears dropped, so half the family started making swords. They were very good at making swords, and people would come from miles around to buy their swords. Because they were so good, the family prospered and multiplied. Then someone invented the pistol, and half the family started making pistols. They were very good at making pistols, and people would come from miles around to buy their pistols. Because they were so good, the family prospered and multiplied. This family is now one of the biggest small-arms manufacturers in their country. Somewhere along the line, the branch that continued to produce swords stopped. And yet away in a little mountain village, there's a man descended from the original spear-makers who continues to make traditional spears as ornaments, film props and tourist souvenirs....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
...benign algae eating protozoan...
So was it: ...) ...) ... [newspaper headline style])
1) a protozoan that eats benign algae (a benign-algae-eating protozoan
2) a benign protozoan that eats algae (a benign, algae-eating protozoan
3) a benign algae that was observed eating a protozoan (a benign algae, eating protozoan,
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Someones been reading to man Cussler novels
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
A weapons analogy? C'mon, you're supposed to use cars!
(very good analogy though)
The funny thing is that this literalism is very recent. As per my sig, quoting Tennyson, educated Victorians were already familiar with an enormously expanded timescale and the idea of replacement of species (he was writing in 1844, before Darwin published). And at school we used to sing that Victorian hymn which included the words "A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone" - English protestants had no trouble at all with the idea that the "days" of Genesis were metaphorical
Whether the original writers thought that, of course, is moot. But who did you believe in the early 1800s - a nomadic goat herder or the clever young men at Cambridge who were making such exciting discoveries? And why do apparently educated Americans claim to believe something that was shown to be false over 200 years ago?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Horizontal evolution means some genetic material did not come from your parent(s), but from other organisms during ingestion, symbiosis, sex, infection, etc. Unless their is an institutional mechanism for this like modern sex, successful horizontal transfers probably failed the vast majority of the time. But maybe the one in quadrillion attempt succeeded and conferred a retained advantage.
Is that you?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Evolution is not directional, that is aiming toward a particular goal, say humans. It goes in both directions, both complexifying and simplifying in order to occupy all the ecological niches it can. Parasites and viruses may be examples of simplification of more complete organisms at one time. The organism in this article may be a simplification of a eukaryote too. Then maybe not.
It is believed to be the closest living organism to the original organisms that spawned all animal life on earth.
Organisms in 49 states, God (or The Lord) in Tennessee.
bonus: captcha is meteor
I, for one, welcome our old protozoan overlords.
is that they're the cast of Jersey Shore.
And rotates on its axis once a day? That's what "literal days as experienced by the universe" would mean. That's even sillier than Young Earth Creationism, which is even sillier than ... something very silly indeed.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The whole taking the six days literally thing is a Protestant error.
Especially when you consider that there was no "evening and morning" for the seventh day. This adds more support to the day-age interpretation of Genesis 1. God has rested; have you joined him in his rest?
Really, how close is the nearest dictionary or spell-checker?
As we analyze more genomes, I wonder how much more our currently accepted taxonomy of organisms will change?
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Honestly, when I read it, my first thought was "Ah, this is a creationist trying to be clever."
My God isn't a murderous psychopath instituting insane and arbitrary laws and demanding adoration under threat of violence.
Happy now?
(And yes, there does seem to be a bizarre radical flavor of Christianity forming in the Republican party like a cancer in response to certain liberal atheist agendas. This isn't to say that Christians nor republicans nor most liberals are evil.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
will finally get some respect!
To compound this, there were no "sons of Adam" to act as witnesses to the creation. Where did that knowledge come from?
If you believe tradition, the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses... But he didn't live through Genesis. How did he come to all that knowledge? He could have abridged other writings, but that still doesn't explain the account of the creation. The explanation that makes the most sense? He (or someone else) was told by God or by an angelic messenger. Therein lies the rub.
God has a habit of being intentionally obtuse at times. Every time someone receives a vision in their dreams, and every time a parable is told, there is someone present who will understand the symbolism. Yet most of the time, the message will go right over everyone else's head. One of the great problems with interpreting the Bible has to do with which passages are meant literally, and which are figurative. Most of the time, it's rather obvious, but there's always someone who will get it wrong. With Genesis, it's actually quite hard.
The question isn't: is the creation account symbolic? The question is: How much of the creation account is symbolic, and of what?
(Those who believe every word of the Bible is literal, really should reread the parables of Christ and the dreams interpreted by Daniel. Then they can try to explain why 100% of the other dreams and sayings recorded are all literal.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Uggh - this story picks up on a bunch of pretty misleading/inaccurate statements made in an article about this work. See http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2012/04/twisted-tree-of-life-award-13-press.html for more detail.
It evolved around one billion years ago, plus or minus a few hundred million years.
Really? How do they know that? Lots of claims flying around in the article (just like any other similar article) but with no proof. What evolved after it? And what evolved after that? Where are the details? Evolution seems to be the only theory that is missing so many details and makes no future predictions and yet if scientists refer to it enough in such a way that they act like they have faith in everything fitting together (despite it not) then people just start taking it for granted that it is real. I guess when you think that all we are is just another organism on an evolutionary tree then you can rationalize the human life isn't as special and sacred as Creationists believe it to be. But we aren't merely animals nor should we be treated as such because animals kill each other without regard. Just because humans sometimes do that doesn't make it right and they don't need another excuse (like viewing us as mere beasts).
How does it taste?
"Is this Heaven?......." "No, its Oslo......" "....oh.......Oslo....God was in Iowa for a while....."
My guess is that it is more likely the result of a series of genetic mergers over time than something that evolved over a billion years ago and then spawned the other trees which in turn lost information. That would make it more complex than many of its decendents and this sort of complexity usually moves in the other direction in evolution. We know blue-green algae exchange DNA with each other. A similar set of processes much later in time could have resulted in this species which managed collect DNA from a set of primitive peers that as a collection gave a significant evolutionary advantage.
How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken light bulb?
Two: one to decide what to change it into, and one to ponder what kind of bulb emits broken light.
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'