6 ms·
Scientists Unveil New ‘Tree of Life’
- pc2g4d 11y agoLoki. and Thor.?
- blacksmith_tb 11y agoLokiarchaeota, they have many genes which code for proteins which aren't shared with other phyla: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lokiarchaeota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lokiarchaeota
- thomasahle 11y agoI found this interesting too. I'm thinking that is where the Norse Gods separated from the rest of the Eukaryotes.
- jessaustin 11y agoThough they differ from us Eukaryotes in important ways, overall the Norse Gods represent a really stunning convergent evolution.
- atorralb 11y agoFor a moment I thought they were talking about the tree of life that the Bible talks about...
- paulsutter 11y agoOriginal article: http://www.nature.com/articles/nmicrobiol201648 http://www.nature.com/articles/nmicrobiol201648 Link to higher-res image: http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/nmicrobiol/2016/nmicrobiol201648/images_hires/w582/nmicrobiol201648-f1.jpg http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/nmicrobiol/2016/nmi...
- teh_klev 11y agoI think you meant to link to this for the better quality image: http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/nmicrobiol/2016/nmicrobiol201648/images_hires/w926/nmicrobiol201648-f1.jpg http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/nmicrobiol/2016/nmi... The NYT has a "super jumbo" diagram as well: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/12/science/11TREEOFLIFE/11TREEOFLIFE-superJumbo.jpg https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/12/science/11TREEOFL...
- guelo 11y agoClassic case where PNG would have been superior.
- chris_wot 11y agoI had to really search on Wikipedia to understand this. In case anyone else was just as confused as I was, have a read of: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_(biology)#Kingdoms_and_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_(biology)#Kingdoms_an... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_(biology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_(biology) 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology) Humans are part of the Eukaryote domain [a], in the Animalia kingdom. [b] In terms of taxonomy, we are Verterbrates [c] of the Synapsid clade (branch) [d] of Chordates. [e] Within this we are mammalian [f] haplorhini [g] primates [h]. Within the primate order we are of the homonid family [i] and are classified as the species homo sapiens. [j] a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote b. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal c. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebrate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebrate d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapsid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapsid e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chordate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chordate f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammal g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplorhini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplorhini h. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate i. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae j https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens
- kyberias 11y agoSo they've unveiled a new 'tree of life' for Bacteria.
- jessaustin 11y agoWe're in Opisthokonta, at the bottom right.
- kyberias 11y agoI know. I was referring to the new findings of the article.
- dekhn 11y agoit's weird how they use the term genomes over and over, but their reconstruction is based on ~12 RNA genes. There doesn't actually seem to be any genomics in this article.
- virusduck 11y agoTo do this kind of very broad genomic analysis, you need a set of markers to compare. These markers, or easy identifiable orthologs, need to be present in most/all the organisms in the comparison. Ribosomal RNA is a well studied marker for both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, so it makes sense to use these as markers.
- dekhn 11y agoyes, I'm aware of this (I studied under Noller who worked with Woese on this). To do broad genomic analysis, you don't need any markers at all. markers are effectively pre-genomic sampling technology. You can obtain the rRNA without doing genomic sequencing. That's far cheaper and faster. What you meant by "markers" are really "gene regions", and my point is that if you use 1% of the gene regions it's not genomic. And, further, the set that you want to compare is much larger than the ribosomal RNA. It should include the entire set of highly conserved genes that are common to all organisms, and even include a number of less conserved genes.
- weberc2 11y agoWhat's with the "Loki" and "Thor" references in the image?
- stuart78 11y agoThis seems to answer that, was wondering the same thing myself. http://www.science20.com/news_articles/is_loki_the_missing_link_in_the_evolution_of_complex_cells-155372 http://www.science20.com/news_articles/is_loki_the_missing_l...
- xefer 11y agoIt's interesting that the three main domains of life are considered archaea, eukaryotes and bacteria; but looking at the diagram, the bacteria seem to be split into to two major clades that are more separated than even archaea and eukaryotes are.
- skywhopper 11y agoI'm always surprised at how much these articles play up the surprise factor of analyses like these. Are the results actually surprising to anyone in the field? It's a cool visualization and this represents an improvement over our older dataset. But not a shocking revelation. It's fine to play up the conventional wisdom angle, but I don't like the pretense that the scientists themselves are surprised that eukaryotes amount to a tiny fraction of the diversity of life on earth.
- vibrio 11y agoWell put. Carl Woese figured this out back when sequencing 20 base pairs was a feat (now 20 million is routine). This paper seems to be fine-focus of his concepts using tools he'd only have dreamed of using in the 1970's. He's a hero.
- ende 11y agoTo be fair, the tree plotting libraries are getting way better.