Reacción a "A Spanish study published in Nature reimagines the origin of our cells as a story of microbial alliances"

The origin of the complex cell is undoubtedly one of the most important transitions in the history of life on our planet. Without it, the subsequent evolution of multicellular animals such as plants, insects, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, including humans, would not have been possible. It is also one of the most abrupt and enigmatic transitions. This work contributes to our understanding of this transition by providing very strong evidence that there were multiple events of incorporation of genetic components from various prokaryotes even before the famous endosymbiotic event between the host cell, an archaeon, and the prokaryote that gave rise to mitochondria.

These new results open the door to a more detailed understanding of this important evolutionary milestone. They confirm that the problem remains relevant today and open the door to future developments that will allow us to understand what kind of innovations in the process of genetic regulation were able to cope with this origin of the eukaryotic cell from multiple organisms. Essentially, how life was able to move from one operating system to a very different one, from a network of genetic regulation to a network of networks.