Way back in the early days when life was just getting going on this planet, the raw "life soup" that made up the oceans had some pretty weird stuff going on in it. At first, (we think) it was just raw strands of DNA, RNA, and amino acids floating around, interacting and replicating. At some point those informational molecules got their act together inside a lipid wall, and the first cell was born.
Very early cells didn't have a nucleus or a cellular membrane. The cells that make up our human bodies (and the bodies of all animals, fungi, and plants) do have both of these. So what happened? Apparently, these complex eukaryotic cells arose when two different kinds of primitive cells (one archaebacteria and one eubacteria) merged together, instead of one eating the other.
New evidence suggests that the genes of these two primitive cell lines, to this very day, metabolize and work very differently inside all of our cells - a symbiosis that is 1.5 billion years old. We are all chimeras - the cellular equivalent of a blending of fish and fowl. Without this ancient cooperation, none of the life we see every day around us would exist.
Read more here: Human Cells a Chimera of Ancient Life via Wired.com
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