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About one billion years ago an event happened that would change our planet forever. It was not the first time that an event of this Tupo was happening, in fact, when something similar happened millions of years before, the ban was opened to the appearance of complex life on earth. This time it was the time of the plants.
All because one cell managed to swallow another.
1+1 = 1. A team of researchers He is trying to recreate In a laboratory the conditions that gave rise to the appearance of the unicellular organisms of which all past and present plants evolved. The project, baptized as 1+1 = 1, has an objective that goes beyond the study of the evolution of these organisms, could give rise to new tools to use both in biotechnology and medicine.
A first radical change. To better understand the experiment, we must return to these two key moments in the evolutionary history of the Earth’s Vira. The first of the events that would mark these changes took about 2,000 million years ago, although the estimates vary. This change occurred when a simple, prokaryotic cell, swallowed another and turned it to its organelle.
The engulmed cell had the ability to produce energy from chemical compounds, which became a useful tool for the “host” cell, which made it its private energy center, The mitochondria. Having such a source of energy was what allowed this cell to evolve, generate an independent nucleus and then give rise to complex life.
Second act. About a billion years after the appearance of the first eukaryotic cells, the story was repeated again: one cell swallowed another and turned it into something of its own, another organelle. On this occasion, the swallowed cell was cyanobacteria, an organism capable of performing photosynthesis.
When integrating into a eukaryotic cell, cyanobacteria went to become a chloroplastallowing his guest to enjoy the advantages of photosynthesis. This change gave way to a new kingdom of life, that of plants.
From symbiosis to total union. The integration process between cells was slowly surely: first individual cells would have become a symbiotic relationship. A relationship that, over the years (millions, perhaps) would give rise to total integration. Replicate the process From beginning to end in laboratory it may not be feasible, so the work focuses on the first steps, in creating a “synthetic symbiosis” that allows us to investigate the processes that gave rise to the formation of complex cells.
The team responsible for this project wants to observe the process closely, Replicating this synthetic relationship between two organisms in controlled conditions. The chosen microorganisms are a bacteria, Burstar Parameciumand a unicellular algae, Chlorella vulgaris. The relationship they seek to replicate the nature symbiosis, in which the bacteria acts as a algae host.
New tools. To carry out the experiment, the team turned to microchips designed specifically for this, which allow studying cells closely maintaining control of light, temperature and nutrient availability in these cells. To “force” symbiosis, the team put the bacteria under stressful conditions and studied interactions with the other organism involved.
Methodological details can be consulted In an article Posted in the magazine Lab on a chip.
More common than it seems. We have proof of two occasions in which these advanced symbiosis changed the course of life, but the relationships between unicellular organisms that give rise to endosimbiosis do not seem to be something strange. In recent years We have seen similar cases discovered in nature, for example The case of the algae Braarudosphaera Bigelowiiwhich absorbed a newly discovered cyanobacteria called UCYN-A.
In Xataka | Luca, this was the ancestral microorganism that all current living beings emerged
Image | Witting et al. (2025), Forschungszentrum Jülich / Degleex Ganzorig
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