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Article: Tracing living signs of ancient life forms.
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- October 7, 1989
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1989 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Tracing living signs of ancient life forms
Like cosmologists who construct speculative models of the early universe, some chemists and molecular biologists build intellectual models of ancient life. With a harvest of biochemical clues from contemporary cells and bacteria, three such researchers have assembled a theoretical model of what they call a "breakthrough organism." This archaic life form, they argue, stood on the evolutionary brink between even earlier organisms, which got by without genetically encoded proteins, and all modern organisms, whose existence rests on such proteins.
"We are attempting to reconstruct an ancient dinosaur using the few ...