19/08/2026
An international study with the collaboration of Dr. Marian Oliva at the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas Margarita Salas - CSIC has mapped the deep evolutionary roots of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton, showing that microtubules, the intracellular “railway system” of our cells, emerged before the origin of complex life.
More info 🔗https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeh1082
Published in Science Advances, it has uncovered compelling new evidence about how microtubules evolved, demonstrating that proteins from Asgard archaea, the microbial group considered the closest known relatives of eukaryotes, can assemble into genuine mini-microtubules displaying dynamic instability: the stochastic growth-and-collapse behaviour previously considered exclusive to modern microtubules.
This finding suggests that many of the molecular principles underlying the eukaryotic cytoskeleton emerged long before the appearance of the first complex cells. Strikingly, these ancient filaments are inhibited by maytansine, indicating that its binding site was already present in organisms that predate eukaryotic life.
The research consortium combined phylogenetic mapping of these primordial proteins with high-resolution structural analysis of the ancestral filaments and functional characterization of their biochemical properties. The contribution of the CIB group was central to this functional validation, confirming the enzymatic capability required to function as a dynamic biological switch and demonstrating that the maytansine-binding pocket represents an exceptionally ancient and conserved evolutionary hotspot.
“These findings reveal an extraordinary degree of evolutionary conservation,” explains Dr. Marian Oliva, co-author of the study. “The same molecular mechanisms that allow anticancer drugs to recognize and modulate human microtubules today were already present in ancestral tubulins long before the emergence of eukaryotic cells, likely more than a billion years ago. This tells us that some of the key features of the cytoskeleton became established very early in evolution and have remained largely unchanged ever since.”
