A new microbe found a mile and a half below the Atlantic Ocean just gave scientists a major clue on the origins of life.

The study provides insight into how the complex cell types make up living beings evolved from simple microbes billions of years ago, Uppsala University reported.

Named Lokiarchaeota -- Loki for short -- the tiny organism is single-celled, but more like a multicelled organism than any ever found before. Scientists are calling it the missing link between single cells and complex life. Their findings were published Wednesday in Nature.

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In the 1970s, the biologist Carl Woese identified a group of organisms called the Archaea, and demonstrated they represented a separate branch in the Tree of Life. The archaeal cells were small and simple, but were more closely related to organisms with complex cell types called eukaryotes. Scientists didn't understand how complex cell types from eukaryotes emerged from simple Archaea cells.

This new microbe, dubbed Loki, may fill in the curious missing link. The organisms were discovered in sediment near super-hot deep sea vents.

It has genes that give eukaryotes, the domain that includes multicellular life, some of their unique features. Because of this, the researchers who discovered it believe it may share a common ancestor with us. Loki is single-celled and lacks the physical characteristics of a eukaryotic cell, but it seems to have a toolkit that could theoretically allow the evolution of a complex organism.

"The puzzle of the origin of the eukaryotic cell is extremely complicated, as many pieces are still missing. We hoped that Loki would reveal a few more pieces of the puzzle, but when we obtained the first results, we couldn't believe our eyes. The data simply looked spectacular," said Thijs Ettema at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University, who lead the scientific team that carried out the study.

The newly discovered organism just brings us one step closer to the common ancestor we're seeking. This single-celled organism would have had an unprecedented potential for complexity, and without it multicelled life could never have evolved.

Findings appeared in the journal Nature.

TagsNewly Discovered Microbe Can Explain the Missing Link of Evolution, evolution, microbe, Loki, Lokiarchaeota, tiny organism, multicelled organism, Archaea, complex cells, eukaryotes, Missing link