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Never Before Seen Organism Reveals Clues to the Origins of Life

2025-12-03 Science & Technology
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Anton Petrov
Anton Petrov
1.6m subscribers

Solarion Discovery: New Evidence Reshapes the Timeline of Eukaryotic Life Origin

Understand how the accidental discovery of a rare microbe, Solarion, provides direct genetic evidence linking ancient Archaea to the emergence of all complex life on Earth. This organism holds a missing genetic toolkit that bridges the gap between single-celled prokaryotes and complex eukaryotes, rewriting parts of our evolutionary past.

Short Summary

  • Discover Solarion arienae, a previously unknown eukaryote that forms a new supergroup called Theparia among ancient single-celled organisms.
  • Identify the persistence of the bacterial SecA gene within Solarion's mitochondria.
  • Establish that the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) likely possessed a much more "bacterial" mitochondrion than current models suggest.

This discussion traces the evolutionary path from simple prokaryotes to complex eukaryotes, highlighting the significance of the Asgard archaea. We then examine how Solarion, found by accident, provides a living snapshot of the immediate ancestor of all complex life, revealing the molecular toolkit retained from the initial symbiotic merger.

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Description

Support this channel on Patreon to help me make this a full time job: https://www.patreon.com/whatdamath (Unreleased videos, extra footage, DMs, no ads) Alternatively, PayPal donations can be sent here: http://paypal.me/whatdamath Get a Wonderful Person Tee: https://teespring.com/stores/whatdamath More cool designs are on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3QFIrFX Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about a discovery of a strange organism called Solarion that contains ancient genes never seen before in similar life Links: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09750-0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecA https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07677-6 Previous videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzqXeAtDnTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y75hzZjSjSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boVeFAXpXQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdzH4WZ2it8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBwEvvz8CuU #solarion #biology #originoflife 0:00 Question of the origin of life on Earth 1:35 Solarion arienae - the strange sun like organism 2:35 Bacteria and archaea 3:10 Asgard archaea and why they matter 4:55 Emergence of eukaryotes 6:35 What this solarion is all about 9:30 Why it's so unique - the secA gene 11:35 Implications for LECA 12:30 Overall conclusions and the new timeline Enjoy and please subscribe Bitcoin/Ethereum to spare? Donate them here to help this channel grow! bc1qnkl3nk0zt7w0xzrgur9pnkcduj7a3xxllcn7d4 or ETH: 0x60f088B10b03115405d313f964BeA93eF0Bd3DbF Thank you to all Patreon supporters of this channel Special thanks also goes to all the wonderful supporters of the channel through YouTube Memberships Credit: Hiroyuki Imachi, Masaru K. Nobu,Nozomi Nakahara,Yuki Morono, Miyuki Ogawara, Yoshihiro Takaki, Yoshinori Takano CC BY SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asgard_archaea#/media/File:Promethearchaeum_syntrophicum.jpg Licenses used: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ and relevant Creative Commons licenses

Top Comments (10)

@PIW_Charles 2025-12-03

This makes me wonder how many ancient persistence strategies never made it past the early chaos. Solarion feels like a living fossil from a forgotten evolutionary experiment reminder that life didn’t take a single path, it sampled a whole menu before settling into what we call cells today.

208 34 replies
@_abdul 2025-12-04

Mitochondria is the Powerhouse of the Cell. just like... Anton is the Powerhouse of the Cutting edge science communication.

102 8 replies
@strange8let 2025-12-05

I recognized the names from the paper: Ivan Čepička taught me protistology in undergrad! And the rest of the people also either work at my uni or at the institute I currently do my master's project at! So proud of them and their amazing research.

43
@ICAleinns 2025-12-04

I always wondered what the ancient bacteria was that got swallowed and became modern day mitochondria. It was already processing oxygen at a time when oxygen was still pretty scarce. I would love to see some research that finds this.

41 2 replies
@MkyNorth 2025-12-03

Hello wonderful people 🎉🎉

41 1 replies
@jimcurtis9052 2025-12-03

Wonderful as always Anton. Thank you. ☺😸👍

32
@pyro7715 2025-12-03

I always appreciate your informative videos, and you not theorizing on things you don't know. You stick to what is known, and that's hard in this attention economy, it would seem. You're a wonderful creator, Anton! 🎉

28 1 replies
@jarociro 2025-12-04

This is the only channel I don't skip the ads just so they get full ad revenue

16 4 replies
@dukeofbees1617 2025-12-04

This transitional period in complex life is so fascinating, and I'm so glad to be alive during lots of present and future discoveries about it. Thanks Anton!

16
@kinesin_fan 2025-12-05

this makes me so proud of my country for discovering this 🇨🇿🇨🇿🇨🇿

9

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