Evolution of Cellular Organization Along the First Branches of the Tree of Life

Current evidence suggests that some form of cellular organization arose well before the time of the last universal common ancestor (LUCA). Standard phylogenetic analyses have shown that several protein families associated with membrane translocation, membrane transport, and membrane bioenergetics were very likely present in the proteome of the LUCA. Despite these cellular systems emerging prior to the LUCA, extant archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes have significant differences in cellular infrastructure and the molecular functions that support it, leading some researchers to argue that true cellularity did not evolve until after the LUCA. Here, we use recently reconstructed minimal proteomes of the LUCA as well as the last archaeal common ancestor (LACA) and the last bacterial common ancestor (LBCA) to characterize the evolution of cellular systems along the first branches of the tree of life. We find that a broad set of functions associated with cellular organization were already present by the time of the LUCA. The functional repertoires of the LACA and LBCA related to cellular organization nearly doubled along each branch following the divergence of the LUCA. These evolutionary trends created the foundation for similarities and differences in cellular organization between the taxonomic domains that are still observed today.