Who thought that the famous question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” were the classic example of a paradox without a solution, you will be very surprised to discover that science has finally provided one answer.
The study published by Nature
A work by the University of Geneva published in the journal Nature reveals the discovery of a primordial unicellular organism, which appeared on Earth long before the first multicellular forms (animals), which would have possessed within its genetic code the instructions necessary to constitute an organism completely similar to the first stages of the embryo. Very simply, therefore, the egg would have hatched firstprecisely an embryo, while the hen as a multicellular organism is a much more recent creature.
The discovery in marine sediments
The unicellular organism dating back over a billion yearscalled Chromosphaera perkinsii, was discovered in 2017 in the marine sediments of Hawaii and was immediately considered a very valuable model for investigating the mechanisms that led to the evolution of unicellular to multicellular organisms on Earth. The study, led by the biologist Omaya Dudin and carried out by numerous scientists from the Swiss University, would have succeeded in mapping the various steps of this evolution.
Through extremely in-depth laboratory analysis of Chromosphaera perkinsii, researchers have discovered that when the single-celled organism reaches its maximum size it stops growing and begins to divideforming a multicellular colony with at least two cells. The research would explain how these cell clusters persist for about a third of the organism’s life cycle and differentiate into at least two types of cells. This operation has impressive similarities with the early stages of animal embryosboth from a structural point of view and for the activity of the genes.
The answer to the “question”
Based on this evidence, the researchers came to the conclusion that it is very likely that the genetic mechanisms that
form cellular differentiation and the development of multicellular organisms present on Earth over a billion years agotherefore long before the appearance of animals, including the chicken.