Scientists try to answer the ‘chicken and egg paradox’; to understand

One of humanity’s biggest questions, even a joke, is this: Which came first, the egg or the chicken? A team of scientists from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, Examination of a single-celled organism suggests that life may have evolved the ability to form embryos before animals appeared.

The organism studied is the ichthyosporic microbe Chromosphaera perkinsii, which has lived on Earth for more than a billion years; It can be found in shallow seas. According to the article published in the scientific journal Nature, this study may help clarify the question of which came first: the egg (embryo) or the chicken (animal)?

According to the article, ichthyosporidae may be fundamental to understanding the issue because The hypothesis is that animals inherited some characteristics of these single-celled organisms.

A billion years ago, these microbes did not lay eggs, but They introduced a chemical reaction in which they divided into several daughter cells, which over time became completely independent. Scientists suggest that this process will be similar to mitosis in animals.

“Chromosphaera perkinsii is a single-celled species discovered in marine sediments around Hawaii in 2017. The first signs of their presence on Earth dated back more than a billion years, that is, long before the appearance of the first animals,” explains an official statement from the University of Geneva.

Who came first: the egg or the chicken?

Scientists suggest that the possibility of passing the ability to form embryos to animals from a common ancestor cannot be ruled out even before the appearance of animals. However, this trait may also have arisen independently through convergent evolution with the help of ichthyosporic microbes.

So the article suggests that the egg must have actually appeared before the chicken. Earlier this year, the same team published another study on the reproductive process in C. perkinsii.

In any case, scientists emphasize that more research is needed to understand whether this feature is really related to the beginning of life. They believe this A more in-depth study of the properties of C. perkinsii may provide answers about the origin of multicellular life in animals.

“Although C. perkinsii is a single-celled species, this behavior suggests that multicellular coordination and differentiation processes were already present in the species long before the first animals appeared on Earth,” said biochemist Omaya Dudin of the University of Geneva.

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