Meet the Ancestor of Everything Alive

One of the most profound questions in biology is also one of the simplest: what is life? A powerful way to approach it is to trace life's origins back to LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Although LUCA lived billions of years ago, microbiologists can infer many of its properties by studying the extraordinary diversity of microorganisms alive today, including both bacteria and archaea.

In this talk, Dipti Nayak, Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley, explores what scientists currently know about LUCA and the early evolution of life on Earth, and how researchers have pieced these insights together through the study of modern microbial diversity. Archaea, a profoundly important yet often overlooked group of microorganisms, play a starring role in this story.

Nayak's talk offers a window into how life originated, how it continues to evolve on our planet, and what that might mean for the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.

Speaker: Dipti Nayak, UC Berkeley