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A comment on Mathematical Simplicity May Drive Evolution's Speed. Parent comment

Re:Mathematical Simplicity May Drive Evolution's Speed by Drdrdrq on Friday November 30, 2018 @01:59PM (#18571597)
> There is a single common ancestor of all living things today.

Are you sure about that? Viruses too? (depends on your definition of "living" of course) To clarify: I don't know if there is or isn't, I just don't think anyone does.

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Re:Mathematical Simplicity May Drive Evolution's Speed by gnulinux on Friday November 30, 2018 @03:07PM (#18572160)
Yes we definitely do (not counting virus) because all living things share ~5/10% of their genetic material (like you share 10% of your genes with some bacteria) [1] which is very unlikely if it were purely random. This is of course one evidence, there are more evidence towards this. Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(biology)

BTW this organism is called LUCA. Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_common_ancestor

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3338800/

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