The concept of a last universal common ancestor of all cells (LUCA, or the progenote) is central to the study of early evolution and life's origin, yet information about how and where LUCA lived is lacking. We investigated all clusters and phylogenetic trees for 6.1 million protein coding genes from 1981 sequenced prokaryotic genomes in order to reconstruct the microbial ecology of LUCA. Among 286,514 protein clusters, we identified 355 protein families (~0.1%) that trace to LUCA by phylogenetic criteria. Because these proteins are not universally distributed, they can shed light on LUCA's physiology. Their functions, properties, and prosthetic groups depict LUCA as anaerobic, CO2-fixing, H2-dependent with a Wood-Ljungdahl (WL) pathway, N2-fixing, and thermophilic. LUCA's biochemistry was replete with FeS clusters and radical reaction mechanisms. Its cofactors reveal dependence upon transition metals, flavins, S-adenosyl methionine (SAM), coenzyme A, ferredoxin, molybdopterin, corrins, and selenium. Its genetic code required nucleoside modifications and SAM-dependent methylations. The 355 phylogenies identify clostridia and methanogens, whose modern lifestyles resemble LUCA's, as basal among their respective domains. LUCA inhabited a geochemically active environment rich in H2, CO2, and iron. The data support the theory of an autotrophic origin of life involving the WL pathway in a hydrothermal setting. The findings are all very much in line with what Everett Shock has been saying for 20 years about thermodynamics at origins.

Hydrogen dependent carbon reduction: The physiology of the last universal common ancestor, Luca

2019 Spring National Meeting

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