All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor,
or LUCA; “The common ancestry of all extant cellular life is evidenced by the universal genetic code, machinery for protein synthesis, shared chirality of the almost-universal set of 20 amino acids and use of ATP as a
common energy currency; As such, our understanding of LUCA impacts our understanding of the early evolution of life on Earth. Was LUCA a simple or complex organism? What kind of environment did it inhabit and when?”