THE TRICKSTER MICROBES SHAKING UP THE TREE OF LIFE Mysterious groups of archaea — named after Loki and other Norse myths — are stirring debate about the origin of complex creatures, including humans. very mythology needs a good trickster, and BY TRACI WATSON muck collected near Greenland1. Together with there are few better than the Norse god Loki. some related microbes, they are prodding biolo- He stirs trouble and insults other gods. He is gists to reconsider one of the greatest events in the elusive, anarchic and ambiguous. He is, in other words, the perfect history of life on Earth — the appearance of the eukaryotes, the group of namesake for a group of microbes — the Lokiarchaeota — that is organisms that includes all plants, animals, fungi and more. Erewriting a fundamental story about life’s early roots. The discovery of archaea in the late 1970s led scientists to propose that These unruly microbes belong to a category of single-celled organisms the tree of life diverged long ago into three main trunks, or ‘domains’. One called archaea, which resemble bacteria under a microscope but are as trunk gave rise to modern bacteria; one to archaea. And the third pro- distinct from them in some respects as humans are. The Lokis, as they are duced eukaryotes. But debates soon erupted over the structure of these sometimes known, were discovered by sequencing DNA from sea-floor trunks. A leading ‘three-domain’ model held that archaea and eukaryotes 322 | NATURE | VOL 569 | 16 MAY 2019 ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. FEATURE NEWS diverged from a common ancestor. But a two-domain scenario suggested fateful bacterium was an archaeon. That would make all eukaryotes a that eukaryotes diverged directly from a subgroup of archaea. sort of overachieving branch of the archaea — or, as some scientists call The arguments, although heated at times, eventually stagnated, says it, a ‘secondary domain’ (see ‘Domains in debate’). microbiologist Phil Hugenholtz at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Then the Lokis and their relatives blew in like “a SCRAMBLED MESSAGES breath of fresh air”, he says, and revived the case for a two-domain tree. Without a wayback machine for microbes, sorting through these hypo- These newly discovered archaea have genes that are considered theses is exceedingly difficult. The fossil record for the earliest eukaryotes hallmarks of eukaryotes. And deep analysis of the organisms’ DNA is sparse, and examples can be inscrutable. Scientists must rely instead on ILLUSTRATION BY FABIO BUONOCORE FABIO BY ILLUSTRATION suggests that modern eukaryotes belong to the same archaeal group. If the records that are written in the genomes of modern organisms, which that’s the case, essentially all complex life — everything from green algae themselves have been scrambled by the passage of time. “We’re trying to blue whales — originally came from archaea. to resolve something that happened probably a couple billion years ago, But many scientists remain unconvinced. Evolutionary tree building is using modern sequence data,” says computational evolutionary biologist messy, contentious work. And no one has yet published evidence to show Tom Williams at the University of Bristol, UK. It is no easy task. that these organisms can be grown in the lab, which makes them difficult Current gene-sequencing technologies have pushed the debate to study. The debate is still rancorous. Stalwarts on both sides are “very forward. Until recently, scientists who sought to identify the bacteria or hostile to each other, and 100% believe there’s nothing correct in the archaea in a particular habitat had to grow the organisms in the lab. Now, other camp”, Hugenholtz says. Some decline to voice researchers can assess microbial diversity in a sample an opinion, for fear of offending senior colleagues. of water or soil by fishing out the DNA and analysing What’s at stake is a deeper understanding of the it using mathematical tools, a technique called meta- biological leap that produced eukaryotes: “The big- “I SAID, ‘HMM, HOW genomics. In 2002, scientists knew of two categories gest thing that happened since the origin of life,” (or phyla) of archaea. Today, thanks to metagenom- according to evolutionary biologist Patrick Keeling ics, the number of groupings has exploded. at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, IS THAT POSSIBLE? Evolutionary scientists have been quick to take Canada. Where they came from “is one of the most advantage of the growing bounty. Using the latest fundamental questions in understanding the nature CAN IT BE THAT powerful modelling techniques, they have created of biological complexity”, he says. To answer that a forest of evolutionary trees detailing the familial question, “we need to resolve who’s related to who”. relationships among archaea. The results, in many THIS IS REALLY cases, place eukaryotes within the archaeal ranks. TWO BECOMES THREE “The weight of evidence, in our view, really did For scientists half a century ago, life on Earth shift toward the two-domain, eocyte tree,” says was split between two categories: eukaryotes, AN ARCHAEAL Williams. But for some, the debate was still short living things with cells that contain membrane- on data. wrapped internal structures, such as a nucleus; and Then, in 2015, a group led by Thijs Ettema, an prokaryotes, single-celled organisms that generally GENOME?’” evolutionary microbiologist at Uppsala University lack internal membranes. Bacteria were the only in Sweden at the time, published DNA sequences for prokaryotes that biologists knew about. Then, in 1977, evolutionary Lokiarchaeota, found in sediments dredged up five years earlier1. Within biologist Carl Woese and his colleagues described archaea as a third, two years, Ettema’s team and other researchers had announced the discov- distinct form of life — one that reached back billions of years2. Life, ery of three new archaeal phyla related to the Lokis5,6. The entire grouping Woese said, should be divided into three bins rather than two. of new phyla was named Asgard after the realm of the Norse gods. He was not without his detractors. In the 1980s, evolutionary biologist The Asgard archaea are tiny in size, but they have proved to be mighty. James Lake at the University of California, Los Angeles, proposed that They have reinvigorated debate about the true number of life’s domains. eukaryotes are sisters to archaea that he called eocytes, which means And they are providing tantalizing hints about the nature of the cells that dawn cells3,4. The idea evolved into the two-domain scenario. gave rise to the first eukaryotes — at least to two-domain proponents. Lake and Woese fought bitterly over their competing models, Like their namesake, Lokiarchaeota and their kin evade easy descrip- culminating in a legendary shouting match in the mid-1980s. After- tion. They are unquestionably archaea, but their genomes include a smor- wards, Woese “didn’t want to meet with Jim Lake”, says microbiologist gasbord of genes that are similar to some found in eukaryotes. Loki DNA, Patrick Forterre at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Lake does not dis- for example, contains genetic instructions for actins, proteins that form a pute the acrimony. “That was really quite a debate, and there was an skeleton-like framework in eukaryotic cells. The genes seemed so out of enormous amount of politics,” he says. Woese died in 2012. place that the researcher who spotted them initially worried that contami- Today, the argument over where eukaryotes came from has matured. nation was to blame. “I said, ‘Hmm, how is that possible? Can it be that Many on both sides agree that the origin of eukaryotes probably this is really an archaeal genome?’” recalls evolutionary microbiologist involved a step known as endosymbiosis. This theory, championed by Anja Spang at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research in Texel. the late biologist Lynn Margulis, holds that a simple host cell living eons Evolutionary modelling reinforced the tight linkage between the ago somehow swallowed a bacterium, and the two struck up a mutually Asgard archaea and eukaryotes. The trees built by Ettema’s team place all beneficial relationship. These captive bacteria eventually evolved into eukaryotes in the Asgard grouping5,7. mitochondria — the cellular substructures that produce energy — and Now, many researchers are using data from these archaea to formulate the hybrid cells became what are now known as eukaryotes. a better picture of the eukaryotic precursor. It might already have had The nature of the engulfing cell is where the two camps diverge. As the some features typical of eukaryotes before it took in the mitochondrial three-domain adherents tell it, the engulfer was an ancestral microbe, predecessor. “It probably had some very primitive membrane-biology now extinct. According to Forterre, it was a “proto-eukaryote” — “neither processes going on,” Ettema says. a modern archaeon nor a modern eukaryote”. In this model, there were According to an analysis published this year7, the ancestor of the several major splits in early evolution. The first happened billions of years Asgard archaea probably fed on carbon-based molecules, such as fatty ago, when primeval organisms gave rise to both bacteria and an extinct acids and butane. This diet would have generated byproducts that could group of microbes. This latter group diverged into archaea and the group nourish partner bacteria. Such food-sharing agreements — common that became eukaryotes. among microbes — could have evolved into a more intimate relation- In the two-domain world, however, a primeval organism gave rise to ship. An archaeon might have snuggled up next to its bacterial partner bacteria and archaea. And the organism that eventually swallowed the to ease nutrient exchanges, leading eventually to the ultimate embrace.