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Williams TA, Szöllősi GJ, Spang A, Foster PG, Heaps SE, Boussau B, Ettema TJG, Embley TM
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 114 (23) E4602-E4611 [2017-06-06; online 2017-05-22]
A root for the archaeal tree is essential for reconstructing the metabolism and ecology of early cells and for testing hypotheses that propose that the eukaryotic nuclear lineage originated from within the Archaea; however, published studies based on outgroup rooting disagree regarding the position of the archaeal root. Here we constructed a consensus unrooted archaeal topology using protein concatenation and a multigene supertree method based on 3,242 single gene trees, and then rooted this tree using a recently developed model of genome evolution. This model uses evidence from gene duplications, horizontal transfers, and gene losses contained in 31,236 archaeal gene families to identify the most likely root for the tree. Our analyses support the monophyly of DPANN (Diapherotrites, Parvarchaeota, Aenigmarchaeota, Nanoarchaeota, Nanohaloarchaea), a recently discovered cosmopolitan and genetically diverse lineage, and, in contrast to previous work, place the tree root between DPANN and all other Archaea. The sister group to DPANN comprises the Euryarchaeota and the TACK Archaea, including
PubMed 28533395
DOI 10.1073/pnas.1618463114
Crossref 10.1073/pnas.1618463114
pii: 1618463114
pmc: PMC5468678