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Physiology, phylogeny, and LUCA
Genomes record their own history. But if we want to look all the way back to life's beginnings some 4 billion years ago, the record of microbial evolution that is preserved in prokaryotic genomes is not easy to read. Microbiology has a lot in common with geology in that regard. Geologists know...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Shared Science Publishers OG
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5348977/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28357330 http://dx.doi.org/10.15698/mic2016.12.545 |
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author | Martin, William F. Weiss, Madeline C. Neukirchen, Sinje Nelson-Sathi, Shijulal Sousa, Filipa L. |
author_facet | Martin, William F. Weiss, Madeline C. Neukirchen, Sinje Nelson-Sathi, Shijulal Sousa, Filipa L. |
author_sort | Martin, William F. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Genomes record their own history. But if we want to look all the way back to life's beginnings some 4 billion years ago, the record of microbial evolution that is preserved in prokaryotic genomes is not easy to read. Microbiology has a lot in common with geology in that regard. Geologists know that plate tectonics and erosion have erased much of the geological record, with ancient rocks being truly rare. The same is true of microbes. Lateral gene transfer (LGT) and sequence divergence have erased much of the evolutionary record that was once written in genomes, and it is not obvious which genes among sequenced genomes are genuinely ancient. Which genes trace to the last universal ancestor, LUCA? The classical approach has been to look for genes that are universally distributed. Another approach is to make all trees for all genes, and sift out the trees where signals have been overwritten by LGT. What is left ought to be ancient. If we do that, what do we find? |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5348977 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Shared Science Publishers OG |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-53489772017-03-29 Physiology, phylogeny, and LUCA Martin, William F. Weiss, Madeline C. Neukirchen, Sinje Nelson-Sathi, Shijulal Sousa, Filipa L. Microb Cell Microbiology Genomes record their own history. But if we want to look all the way back to life's beginnings some 4 billion years ago, the record of microbial evolution that is preserved in prokaryotic genomes is not easy to read. Microbiology has a lot in common with geology in that regard. Geologists know that plate tectonics and erosion have erased much of the geological record, with ancient rocks being truly rare. The same is true of microbes. Lateral gene transfer (LGT) and sequence divergence have erased much of the evolutionary record that was once written in genomes, and it is not obvious which genes among sequenced genomes are genuinely ancient. Which genes trace to the last universal ancestor, LUCA? The classical approach has been to look for genes that are universally distributed. Another approach is to make all trees for all genes, and sift out the trees where signals have been overwritten by LGT. What is left ought to be ancient. If we do that, what do we find? Shared Science Publishers OG 2016-11-25 /pmc/articles/PMC5348977/ /pubmed/28357330 http://dx.doi.org/10.15698/mic2016.12.545 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Microbiology Martin, William F. Weiss, Madeline C. Neukirchen, Sinje Nelson-Sathi, Shijulal Sousa, Filipa L. Physiology, phylogeny, and LUCA |
title | Physiology, phylogeny, and LUCA |
title_full | Physiology, phylogeny, and LUCA |
title_fullStr | Physiology, phylogeny, and LUCA |
title_full_unstemmed | Physiology, phylogeny, and LUCA |
title_short | Physiology, phylogeny, and LUCA |
title_sort | physiology, phylogeny, and luca |
topic | Microbiology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5348977/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28357330 http://dx.doi.org/10.15698/mic2016.12.545 |
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