I screwed up my little figure. Please excuse it. The one below
might be better...but might not.
Andrew J. Roger wrote:
>> Susan Hogarth wrote:
> >
> > higginss at VAX.CS.HSCSYR.EDU wrote:
> > >
> > >... Also, what extant
> > > organism is considered the most ancient.
> >
> > Could you explain what this means? On the surface, the question seems to
> > be "What is the oldest thing still living?", but I suspect you mean
> > something different...
>> I suppose it could mean: what living organism displays the most
> retained ancestral features of the latest common ancestor of
> all life? I think this could be a reasonable question. My
> bet is that eubacteria, in general, probably are most similar
> to the latest common ancestor of life in their overall cellular
> architecture-- they prokaryotic cells with ester-linked fatty-acyl
> lipids, with a circular chromosome and genes organised into
> operons. It seems that the cenancestor (most recent common
> ancestor) probably had all of these features if one accepts
> the following tree:
> Ester/Fatty-acyl Circ chromo Operons
> _____ Eubacteria YES YES YES
> /
> ---/ ___ Archaebacteria NO YES YES
> \
> \/
> \
> \___ Eukaryotes YES NO NO
>> Of course the overall similarity of an organism to an ancestor will
> depend on what characters you choose to evaluate AND how you weight
> the various characters.
>> Cheers
> Andrew J. Roger
