by Christoph — Based on their know­ledge of the mor­phol­ogy of P. syntro­phicum MK-D1 from elec­tron micro­scopy and their knowl­edge of its phys­i­ol­ogy from growth as­says and genome analy­sis, Imachi, Nobu et al. (2020) pro­pose a hy­po­thet­i­cal model, the E3 model, of how the first evolution­ary steps to­wards eu­karyo­ge­n­e­sis might have oc­curred in an an­ces­tral ar­chaeon liv­ing ~2 bil­lion years ago.

by Christoph — ...is a meta­phys­i­cal af­fair across all hu­man cul­tures. For experi­men­­tal bi­ol­o­gists, it is the more pro­saic, phys­i­cal task of cul­ti­vat­ing ex­tant pro­karyotic rel­a­tives of the an­cestors of the eu­kary­otes in the lab. Or the 'most likely' an­ces­tors of the eu­kary­otes, to be cau­tious when leap­ing back ~2 bil­lion years in time. Now, meet the ar­chaeon Pro­methearchaeum syn­troph­icum MK-D1 and its syn­trophic com­pan­ions.