Bacteria perfected protein complexes more than 3.5 billion years ago

Researchers are resurrecting ancient bacterial protein complexes to determine how 3.5-billion-year-old cells functioned versus cells of today. Surprisingly, they are not that different, reports a study published June 9 in Cell Chemical Biology. Despite a popular hypothesis that primordial organisms had simple enzyme proteins, evidence suggests that bacteria around 500 million years after life began already had the sophisticated cellular machinery that exists today.