Sentinel Digital Desk
Scientists may have uncovered evidence to answer the classic question: What came first, the chicken or the egg? The ability to form embryo-like structures might predate the emergence of animals themselves.
Scientists in Switzerland may have solved the chicken-or-egg paradox. A single-celled organism older than complex animals suggests that eggs existed long before chickens.
The discovery centers on Chromosphaera perkinsii, a single-celled organism that existed over a billion years ago. Researchers observed its reproductive process, which strikingly resembles early animal embryonic development.
C. perkinsii undergoes a process called palintomy, forming a cell cluster similar to a blastula, an early-stage animal embryo. This suggests that the genetic tools for embryonic development existed long before complex multicellular life evolved.
Biochemists propose that this behavior could represent an ancestral trait or a case of convergent evolution, where similar features evolve independently. This insight may offer clues about how multicellular life emerged.