Origins of major archaeal clades correspond to gene acquisitions from bacteria.

ABSTRACT: The mechanisms that underlie the origin of major prokaryotic groups are poorly understood. In principle, the origin of both species and higher taxa among prokaryotes should entail similar mechanisms--ecological interactions with the environment paired with natural genetic variation involving lineage-specific gene innovations and lineage-specific gene acquisitions. To investigate the origin of higher taxa in archaea, we have determined gene distributions and gene phylogenies for the 267,568 protein-coding genes of 134 sequenced archaeal genomes in the context of their homologues from 1,847 reference bacterial genomes. Archaeal-specific gene families define 13 traditionally recognized archaeal higher taxa in our sample. Here we report that the origins of these 13 groups unexpectedly correspo

SUBMITTER: Nelson-Sathi S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4285555 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature