Last universal common ancestor 'more sophisticated than we thought'

…However, in a 2003 study the same team from the University of Illinois showed that the polyphosphate storage structure in bacteria was physically, chemically and functionally the same as an organelle called an acidocalcisome, which is found in many single-celled eukaryotes.

This meant that the acidocalcisomes arose before the bacterial and eukaryotic lineages of the tree of life split, making the organelle even more ancient than realised. …