TECH Signal 201
Study finds bacteria and archaea may have independently evolved into free-living cells
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Research published in Science Advances suggests the two fundamental domains of life independently transitioned from metal-catalyzed vent chemistry to free-living cells, each replacing inorganic catalysts with different enzymes.
If corroborated, this finding reframes the origin-of-life problem from a single emergence event to a convergent one, meaning the leap to free-living metabolism may be more repeatable than previously assumed. For researchers engineering minimal cells or studying metabolic networks, it implies that multiple enzymatic solutions can satisfy the same core reaction network.
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An analysis of 420 conserved metabolic reactions found that the enzymes catalyzing them are not conserved across the bacteria-archaea divide.
LUCA likely possessed enzymes for only about half of its metabolic reactions, relying on environmental metals for the remainder.
Bacteria and archaea appear to have independently replaced those inorganic metal catalysts with newly evolved enzymes after their lineages diverged.
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