Authors
Laura Eme, Daniel Tamarit, Eva F Caceres, Courtney W Stairs, Valerie De Anda, Max E Schön, Kiley W Seitz, Nina Dombrowski, William H Lewis, Felix Homa, Jimmy H Saw, Jonathan Lombard, Takuro Nunoura, Wen-Jun Li, Zheng-Shuang Hua, Lin-Xing Chen, Jillian F Banfield, Emily St John, Anna-Louise Reysenbach, Matthew B Stott, Andreas Schramm, Kasper U Kjeldsen, Andreas P Teske, Brett J Baker, Thijs JG Ettema
Publication date
2023/6/29
Journal
Nature
Volume
618
Issue
7967
Pages
992-999
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK
Description
In the ongoing debates about eukaryogenesis—the series of evolutionary events leading to the emergence of the eukaryotic cell from prokaryotic ancestors—members of the Asgard archaea play a key part as the closest archaeal relatives of eukaryotes. However, the nature and phylogenetic identity of the last common ancestor of Asgard archaea and eukaryotes remain unresolved, –. Here we analyse distinct phylogenetic marker datasets of an expanded genomic sampling of Asgard archaea and evaluate competing evolutionary scenarios using state-of-the-art phylogenomic approaches. We find that eukaryotes are placed, with high confidence, as a well-nested clade within Asgard archaea and as a sister lineage to Hodarchaeales, a newly proposed order within Heimdallarchaeia. Using sophisticated gene tree and species tree reconciliation approaches, we show that analogous to the evolution of eukaryotic …
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