The Math Of Biology And LUCA's Leaky Membrane
Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - 17:10
in Biology & Nature
Descent with modification means that all life on Earth probably came from one common ancestor – a single-celled organism – We just have to speculate and create models for what it may have looked like, how it lived and how it evolved into today's modern cell. So model we do and a recent paper uses mathematical modeling to speculate that life's Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) had a 'leaky' membrane, which, if would, would help scientists answer two of biology's biggest questions: 1. Why all cells use the same bizarre, complex mechanism to harvest energy 2. Why two types of single-celled organism that form the deepest branch on the tree of life – bacteria and archaea – have completely different cell membranes read more