
Blood’s Ancestral Blueprint: A 700-Million-Year Link to Single-Celled Ancestors
An international team led by Kyoto University traced the evolution of blood cells back about 700 million years, showing blood likely formed from ancient unicellular gene programs rather than arising anew with multicellular life. By comparing transcriptomes across species, they found macrophage-like ancestors and shared regulatory genes (notably Fos) that link early single-celled organisms to later mast cells, T cells, red blood cells, and platelets, revealing a deep evolutionary history with implications for understanding diseases such as cancer.












