Inspection of more than 286,000 gene families has shed light on the most recent common ancestors of all life. The last universal common ancestor was likely to have been a thermophilic, anaerobic, N2-fixing organism that used the Wood–Ljungdahl pathway to fix CO2, using H2 as an electron donor.
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McInerney, J. Evolution: A four billion year old metabolism. Nat Microbiol 1, 16139 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.139
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.139
