Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized | Quanta Magazine

All complex multicellular life that any of us regularly see is made of eukaryotic cells.

Eukaryotes are the ancestor of all plants, animals and fungi alive today .

No one knows for sure how that first cell arose, but biologists believe it took at least a billion years of interactions.

Experts believed that bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes each evolved independently from a more ancient ancestor.

Over the last decade , the discovery of Asgard archaea, our closest living prokaryotic relatives, has offered valuable clues.

In 2015 , Ettema went looking for that mysterious first host cell in a field of sulfide chimneys at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean .

Underwater vents are good candidates for the nursery of that original cell.

In the coming decades , combining metagenomics with other techniques, such as microbe fossil analysis and induced endosymbiosis, holds the potential to reveal more clues to our origin. “The most fascinating thing about eukaryotes is that we still don’t understand how they came about,” Gabaldón said. “They are amazingly diverse, everywhere, and have adapted to many different lifestyles. We still have a lot to learn.”.