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Article
Expanded phylogeny of extremely halophilic archaea shows multiple independent adaptations to hypersaline environments
Extremely halophilic archaea (Haloarchaea, Nanohaloarchaeota, Methanonatronarchaeia and Halarchaeoplasmatales) thrive in saturating salt concentrations where they must maintain osmotic equilibrium with their e...
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Article
Open AccessOne high quality genome and two transcriptome datasets for new species of Mantamonas, a deep-branching eukaryote clade
Mantamonads were long considered to represent an “orphan” lineage in the tree of eukaryotes, likely branching near the most frequently assumed position for the root of eukaryotes. Recent phylogenomic analyses ...
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Article
Open AccessInference and reconstruction of the heimdallarchaeial ancestry of eukaryotes
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 clo...
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Article
Life through the lens of metabolism
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Article
Open AccessA closed Candidatus Odinarchaeum chromosome exposes Asgard archaeal viruses
Asgard archaea have recently been identified as the closest archaeal relatives of eukaryotes. Their ecology, and particularly their virome, remain enigmatic. We reassembled and closed the chromosome of Candidatus
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Article
Site-and-branch-heterogeneous analyses of an expanded dataset favour mitochondria as sister to known Alphaproteobacteria
Determining the phylogenetic origin of mitochondria is key to understanding the ancestral mitochondrial symbiosis and its role in eukaryogenesis. However, the precise evolutionary relationship between mitochon...
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Article
Releasing uncurated datasets is essential for reproducible phylogenomics
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Article
A natural toroidal microswimmer with a rotary eukaryotic flagellum
We describe Idionectes vortex gen. nov., sp. nov., a unicellular microeukaryote that swims by continuous inversion of its surface, similar to a vortex ring. This previously unreported mode of motility approximate...
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Article
Proposal of the reverse flow model for the origin of the eukaryotic cell based on comparative analyses of Asgard archaeal metabolism
The origin of eukaryotes represents an unresolved puzzle in evolutionary biology. Current research suggests that eukaryotes evolved from a merger between a host of archaeal descent and an alphaproteobacterial ...
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Article
Open AccessAsgard archaea capable of anaerobic hydrocarbon cycling
Large reservoirs of natural gas in the oceanic subsurface sustain complex communities of anaerobic microbes, including archaeal lineages with potential to mediate oxidation of hydrocarbons such as methane and ...
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Article
Hemimastigophora is a novel supra-kingdom-level lineage of eukaryotes
Almost all eukaryote life forms have now been placed within one of five to eight supra-kingdom-level groups using molecular phylogenetics1–4. The ‘phylum’ Hemimastigophora is probably the most distinctive morphol...
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Article
Open AccessNuclear genome sequence of the plastid-lacking cryptomonad Goniomonas avonlea provides insights into the evolution of secondary plastids
The evolution of photosynthesis has been a major driver in eukaryotic diversification. Eukaryotes have acquired plastids (chloroplasts) either directly via the engulfment and integration of a photosynthetic cy...
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Article
Erratum: Archaea and the origin of eukaryotes
Nature Reviews Microbiology 15, 711–723 (2017) On pages 714–715 of this article, in the first paragraph of the section What do we currently know about LECA?, the sentence “Phylogenomic and comparative genomic ...
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Article
Archaea and the origin of eukaryotes
The Archaea was recognized as a third domain of life 40 years ago. Molecular evidence soon suggested that the Eukarya represented a sister group to the Archaea...
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Article
Organelles that illuminate the origins of Trichomonas hydrogenosomes and Giardia mitosomes
Many anaerobic microbial parasites possess highly modified mitochondria known as mitochondrion-related organelles (MROs). The best-studied of these are the hydrogenosomes of Trichomonas vaginalis and Spironucleus...
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Article
Open AccessHeme pathway evolution in kinetoplastid protists
Kinetoplastea is a diverse protist lineage composed of several of the most successful parasites on Earth, organisms whose metabolisms have coevolved with those of the organisms they infect. Parasitic kinetopla...
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Timing the Origins of Multicellular Eukaryotes Through Phylogenomics and Relaxed Molecular Clock Analyses
Multicellularity has evolved many times during eukaryote evolution. Deciphering the evolutionary transitions to multicellularity requires a robust deep phylogeny of eukaryotes to clarify the relationships amon...
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Article
Open AccessThe phylogenomic analysis of the anaphase promoting complex and its targets points to complex and modern-like control of the cell cycle in the last common ancestor of eukaryotes
The Anaphase Promoting Complex or Cyclosome (APC/C) is the largest member of the ubiquitin ligase [E3] family. It plays a crucial role in the control of the cell cycle and cell proliferation by mediating the p...
