sarah_stirlingThe mother of all mothersDid you know that, long ago, our single-celled ancestors live
sarah_stirlingThe mother of all mothersDid you know that, long ago, our single-celled ancestors lived in symbiosis with bacteria known as mitochondria? As a result, every cell in your body contains a mitochondrion. They’re dubbed the ‘body’s powerhouses’ as they generate energy for the cell.Also as a throwback to this time, mitochondria have their own DNA, separate from your nuclear DNA. Whereas the latter is a merger between your parents’ DNAs, mtDNA is passed on solely through the maternal line. This makes it easier to trace, anthropologically.In 1987, three geneticists published an extraordinary leap forward: they had traced all human ancestry to a single female, a mother that unites all modern humans. They dubbed her ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ and worked out that she lived around 200,000 years ago, in Africa. Of course, Mitochondrial Eve wasn’t the first woman, but every other human lineage eventually had no female offspring.Whether the word ‘mother’ has positive, negative or indifferent meaning for you — whether you already knew all this or it’s news to you — in these divisive times, I wanted to share this unifying thought that we are actually all related: that all humans share the mother of all mothers.But, to come full circle, thanks to further DNA research, we now know that all organisms on Earth trace back to a single-celled type of organism dubbed Luca (Last Universal Common Ancestor), which lived around four billion years ago. We even know that it most likely lived at the place where water met magma on the ocean floor. Maybe that’s why many of us love warmth and water!It’s hard to think of a more unifying view of life. We’re all related. It’s all connected. -- source link