In 2010, biologists made a shocking discovery. Living in the mud of the North Sea were microorganisms whose genes looked a lot like ours. Genetic analysis revealed that humans, oak trees, blue whales — any living things whose cells have nuclei and mitochondria — are related to these microbes, which were named the Asgard archaea after the home of the Norse gods. Two billion years ago, it was an ancestor of an Asgard that diverged from its kin and eventually became us.
No one knows precisely how that happened, and for a long time, no one even knew what these long-lost cousins looked like. Asgard DNA could be fished out of the mud and studied, but the cells themselves were so rare and hard to grow in the lab that no one could scrutinize them under the microscope. There was an explosion of speculation among scientists about what they would be like. Would they be big? Small? Covered with tentacles, shaped like rods, perfectly spherical? Do their cells look like ours inside, or are they completely different?
Little by little, researchers have worked out ways to grow them and watch as they go about their lives. Now, some of the first reports about the biology of certain Asgards are revealing new, provocative details about the interior lives of these cells. The latest paper, from the labs of Martin Pilhofer at ETH Zurich and Christa Schleper at the University of Vienna, describes how a portion of their cytoskeleton — the set of cellular structures that give a cell its shape — is surprisingly similar to what can be found in more complex organisms such as ourselves.
Quanta Magazine
In 2010, biologists made a shocking discovery. Living in the mud of the North Sea were microorganisms whose genes looked a lot like ours. Genetic analysis revealed that humans, oak trees, blue whales — any living things whose cells have nuclei and mitochondria — are related to these microbes, which were named the Asgard archaea after the home of the Norse gods. Two billion years ago, it was an ancestor of an Asgard that diverged from its kin and eventually became us.
No one knows precisely how that happened, and for a long time, no one even knew what these long-lost cousins looked like. Asgard DNA could be fished out of the mud and studied, but the cells themselves were so rare and hard to grow in the lab that no one could scrutinize them under the microscope. There was an explosion of speculation among scientists about what they would be like. Would they be big? Small? Covered with tentacles, shaped like rods, perfectly spherical? Do their cells look like ours inside, or are they completely different?
Little by little, researchers have worked out ways to grow them and watch as they go about their lives. Now, some of the first reports about the biology of certain Asgards are revealing new, provocative details about the interior lives of these cells. The latest paper, from the labs of Martin Pilhofer at ETH Zurich and Christa Schleper at the University of Vienna, describes how a portion of their cytoskeleton — the set of cellular structures that give a cell its shape — is surprisingly similar to what can be found in more complex organisms such as ourselves.
🔗 Read the full story: www.quantamagazine.org/tiny-tubes-reveal-clues-to-…
🎨 Credit
1, 2: Torsten Wittmann/Science Source
3: Vera Hartmann; Courtesy of Schleper Lab
1 month ago | [YT] | 1,077