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Explorations / The history of the cell / Part 3 of 7

Two kinds of simple cell

Bacteria and archaea, how a study of ribosomal RNA told them apart, and how simple cells had the Earth to themselves for some two billion years. 6 scenes.

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Part 1, A planet without life, is open to everyone.

In this part
  1. Today, as for billions of yearsA simple cell, opened
  2. Found in 1977Two kinds, not one
  3. TodayDifferent skins
  4. About 4.2 billion years ago and after (one estimate; debated)Two lines from LUCA
  5. From about 3.5 to about 2 billion years agoTwo billion years of simple cells
  6. Before 2.4 billion years ago; how long before is debatedSplitting water
Practise this 2.2Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic CellsBiology →7.4Common Ancestry and Phylogenetic TreesBiology →3.2Photosynthesis: Light ReactionsBiology →
← Part 2 · The first cells Part 4 · Oxygen changes everything →
The history of the cell, in order
  1. A planet without life
  2. The first cells· locked
  3. Two kinds of simple cell
  4. Oxygen changes everything· locked
  5. The cell that swallowed a bacterium· locked
  6. Many cells· locked
  7. The tree today· locked
Sources
  • Carl R. Woese and George E. Fox (1977). Phylogenetic structure of the prokaryotic domain: The primary kingdoms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 74(11): 5088–5090.
  • Carl R. Woese, Otto Kandler and Mark L. Wheelis (1990). Towards a natural system of organisms: Proposal for the domains Archaea, Bacteria, and Eucarya. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87(12): 4576–4579.
  • Samta Jain, Antonella Caforio and Arnold J. M. Driessen (2014). Biosynthesis of archaeal membrane ether lipids. Frontiers in Microbiology 5: 641.
  • Sonja-Verena Albers and Benjamin H. Meyer (2011). The archaeal cell envelope. Nature Reviews Microbiology 9: 414–426.
  • Ken F. Jarrell and Sonja-Verena Albers (2012). The archaellum: an old motility structure with a new name. Trends in Microbiology 20(7): 307–312.
  • Edmund R. R. Moody and others (2024). The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system. Nature Ecology & Evolution 8: 1654–1666.
  • Tom A. Williams, Peter G. Foster, Cymon J. Cox and T. Martin Embley (2013). An archaeal origin of eukaryotes supports only two primary domains of life. Nature 504: 231–236.
  • Anja Spang and others (2015). Complex archaea that bridge the gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Nature 521: 173–179.
  • Laura Eme and others (2023). Inference and reconstruction of the heimdallarchaeial ancestry of eukaryotes. Nature 618: 992–999.
  • Michael M. Tice and Donald R. Lowe (2004). Photosynthetic microbial mats in the 3,416-Myr-old ocean. Nature 431: 549–552.
  • Ruth E. Ley and others (2006). Unexpected diversity and complexity of the Guerrero Negro hypersaline microbial mat. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 72(5): 3685–3695.
  • Woodward W. Fischer, James Hemp and Jena E. Johnson (2016). Evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 44: 647–683.
  • Gregory P. Fournier and others (2021). The Archean origin of oxygenic photosynthesis and extant cyanobacterial lineages. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288: 20210675.