India, April 23 -- Life on this planet is incredibly diverse, but, paradoxically, the rules that govern life as we know it are simple. A certain harmony is maintained across all life, from bacteria and amoeba to complex plants and animals. For example, all life shares fundamental elements such as genetic material in the form of DNA and cellular structures. Discoveries that fundamentally alter how we perceive life are rare.

A recent discovery of a microscopic nitrogen-capturing factory - an organelle named the "nitroplast" - in a kind of marine algae alters what we know about the boundaries of life.

But let's take a step back first.

At the root of Earth's biological diversity is the last universal common ancestor, or "LUCA", the shared ...