Eons

Currently Playing: What Was the Ancestor of Everything? (feat. PBS Space Time and It’s Okay To Be Smart)

Check out It’s Okay To Be Smart’s video for more about the origins of life on earth: https://youtu.be/_uAJY1mqtw4 And check out PBS Space Time’s video on the physics of life: https://youtu.be/GcfLZSL7YGw PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to http://to.pbs.org/DonateEons The search for our origins goes back to a single common ancestor -- one that remains shrouded in mystery. It’s the ancestor of everything we know and today scientists call it the last universal common ancestor, or LUCA. Produced for PBS Digital Studios. Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet? Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/eonsshow Twitter - https://twitter.com/eonsshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/eonsshow/ References: https://www.nature.com/articles/nmicrobiol2016116 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/science/last-universal-ancestor.html https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/looking-for-luca-the-last-universal-common-ancestor/ http://microbialcell.com/researcharticles/physiology-phylogeny-and-luca/ http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/poolepaper.html http://we.vub.ac.be/~dglg/Web/Teaching/Les/Discussions/Pre-biotic/Moreira-LUCA.pdf http://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/7/2/27/htm https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11084-017-9542-5 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4008548/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4176008/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/buds-of-the-tree-the-highway-to-the-last-universal-common-ancestor/ED26AA7787BA5A152090913CC7C20067 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15035042 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21740227 https://biologydirect.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1745-6150-8-32 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0923250805002676 https://www.saylor.org/content/BIO_Kimball/users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/G/GenomeSizes.html