Bhubaneswar: What came first — chicken or egg? Scientists have finally found some evidence to answer this age-old tricky question.
A new study has revealed that the process of embryo formation began much before the animals were born.
The revelation comes from the study of a single-celled organism called Chromosphaera perkinsii, an Ichthyosporean microbe that has existed for over a billion years, stated the research.
Single-celled organism C. perkinsii reproduces in a manner almost similar to the embryonic development in animals, observed the team led by biochemist Marine Olivetta from the University of Geneva.
“Although C. perkinsii is a unicellular species, this behavior shows that multicellular coordination and differentiation processes are already present in the species, well before the first animals appeared on Earth,” biochemist Omaya Dudin of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology explained.
The similarities between reproduction process of C. perkinsii and the embryonic development in animals suggested that “the genetic programming for embryo formation may have existed long before the evolution of complex multicellular organisms.”
Published in the journal Nature, this groundbreaking study “sheds light on the origin of animal life and also demonstrates the remarkable complexity and versatility of even the simplest life forms on our planet.”