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New research from the University of Texas suggests complex organisms like ourselves may not have been as well equipped to fight off viruses if not for the giftsLong before multicellular life evolved, our planet was home to a widespread group of ancestral microbes.. But archaea cells are evolutionarily closer to eukaryotic life forms, like plants and animals, than they are to their simpler microbial cousins.
Researchers at UT have now used an artificial intelligence program to comb through a newly expanded set of Asgard genomes to identify ancient immune defenses.ompared to bacteria, Asgard archaea have evolved a broad array of defense systems, some of which are also innate in eukaryotes. Of all the defense systems in the genomes from Asgard archaea analyzed, roughly 2 percent were linked to an immune protein, calledToday, viperin plays a role in the immune systems of all complex life on Earth, which suggests it was present in the last common ancestor of archaea and eukaryotes.
According to the new findings, eukaryotic viperins and Asgard viperins are"sister proteins and share a common ancestor".integrative biologist Brett Baker from UT,"now it's saying that even some of the defense systems in eukaryotes came from Asgards." In addition to viperin, nearly 8 percent of the Asgard archaea defense genes analyzed were associated with argonautes. These are immune proteins that chop up DNA to halt the spread of a virus.
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