The question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, has puzzled people for centuries. But scientists may have finally solved the mystery. Nature possessed the tools to create eggs long before it made chickens, according to a new study.
It is believed the first life forms to appear on Earth were composed of a single cell, evolving over time to become more complex. But the process of how that happened is not well understood.
To look into this, a team from the University of Geneva studied Chromosphaera perkinsii, a single-celled species that was discovered in 2017 in marine sediments around Hawaii. It separated from the animal evolutionary line more than a billion years ago, making it a good case study to probe the evolutionary process that led to multicellularity – or life forms made of multiple cells.
The scientists discovered that Chromosphaera perkinsii, once they reach their maximum size, divide without growing any further – forming multicellular colonies with a three-dimensional structure that looks similar to the early stages of animal embryonic development.
That means embryonic development might have existed before the evolution of animals, meaning the egg came before the chicken, they say.
These colonies persist for around a third of their life cycle and included at least two different cell types, which scientists describe as a “surprising phenomenon” for the type of organism. That suggests the process governing complex multicellular development was already present more than a billion years ago, the researchers said.
“It’s fascinating, a species discovered very recently allows us to go back in time more than a billion years,” said Marine Olivetta, a laboratory technician at the Department of Biochemistry in the Unige Faculty of Science and first author of the study.
She said the study demonstrates that either the principle of embryonic development existed before animals, or multicellular development mechanisms evolved separately in C. perkinsii.
‘‘Although C. perkinsii is a unicellular species, this behaviour shows that multicellular co-ordination and differentiation processes are already present in the species, well before the first animals appeared on Earth’’, said Omaya Dudin, who led the research.
Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.
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The Outsider
Stephen King, Penguin
Normcore explained
Something of a fashion anomaly, normcore is essentially a celebration of the unremarkable. The term was first popularised by an article in New York magazine in 2014 and has been dubbed “ugly”, “bland’ and "anti-style" by fashion writers. It’s hallmarks are comfort, a lack of pretentiousness and neutrality – it is a trend for those who would rather not stand out from the crowd. For the most part, the style is unisex, favouring loose silhouettes, thrift-shop threads, baseball caps and boyish trainers. It is important to note that normcore is not synonymous with cheapness or low quality; there are high-fashion brands, including Parisian label Vetements, that specialise in this style. Embraced by fashion-forward street-style stars around the globe, it’s uptake in the UAE has been relatively slow.
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