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. 2022 Dec 14;1(4):359-367.
doi: 10.1002/mlf2.12049. eCollection 2022 Dec.

Carl Woese: Still ahead of our time

Patrick Forterre  1   2
Affiliations

Carl Woese: Still ahead of our time

Patrick Forterre. mLife. .
No abstract available

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Parallel evolution of Woese's trees and Eocyte trees in the last four decades. (A) Schematic representation of the first unrooted tree based on rRNA. (B) The first unrooted Eocyte tree based on ribosome structure; in that tree, Eocytes (cells of dawn) included all thermophilic organisms, even those now included in Euryarchaeota, such as Thermoplasma and Thermococcus, in agreement with the hot origin of life hypothesis. (C) The classical Woese's tree of life rooted in the “bacterial branch”, with the dotted line corresponding to the Darwinian threshold. (D) The eocyte tree rooted in the bacterial branch. Thermoplasma and Thermococcus were finally removed from Eocytes. (E) The 3D tree based on RNA polymerase and a subset of large universal proteins, . (a) Asgard archaea, (b) the BAT superphylum including Bathyarchaeota, Aigiarchaeota, and Thaumarchaeota, (c) Crenarchaeota, (e) Euryarchaeota. (F) The 2D tree based on various concatenations of universal proteins, , . Eukaryotes branch within Asgard archaea (a). Archaea should include Eukaryotes to be monophyletic. Note that in both 2D and 3D trees, Arkarya are monophyletic. The red line indicates the association of a bacterium and an Asgard archaeon as the trigger of eukaryogenesis, producing for some a “ring of life” instead of a tree of life. 2D, two‐domain; 3D, three‐domain; rRNA, ribosomal RNA.
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