Phylogenomics supports microsporidia as the earliest diverging clade of sequenced fungi.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Microsporidia is one of the taxa that have experienced the most dramatic taxonomic reclassifications. Once thought to be among the earliest diverging eukaryotes, the fungal nature of this group of intracellular pathogens is now widely accepted. However, the specific position of microsporidia within the fungal tree of life is still debated. Due to the presence of accelerated evolutionary rates, phylogenetic analyses involving microsporidia are prone to methodological artifacts, such as long-branch attraction, especially when taxon sampling is limited.

Results

Here we exploit the recent availability of six complete microsporidian genomes to re-assess the long-standing question of their phylogenetic position. We show that microsporidians have a similar low level of c

SUBMITTER: Capella-Gutierrez S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3586952 | biostudies-literature | 2012 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature