Despite the surge of microbial genome data, experimental testing is important to confirm
inferences about the cell biology, ecological roles and evolution of microorganisms. As the …

Genome-scale data and the development of novel statistical phylogenetic approaches have
greatly aided the reconstruction of a broad sketch of the tree of life and resolved many of its …

The nature of the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), its age and its impact on the Earth
system have been the subject of vigorous debate across diverse disciplines, often based on …

Beetles constitute the most biodiverse animal order with over 380 000 described species
and possibly several million more yet unnamed. Recent phylogenomic studies have arrived …

In the ongoing debates about eukaryogenesis—the series of evolutionary events leading to
the emergence of the eukaryotic cell from prokaryotic ancestors—members of the Asgard …

Asgard is a recently discovered superphylum of archaea that appears to include the closest
archaeal relatives of eukaryotes,,,–. Debate continues as to whether the archaeal ancestor …

Efforts to understand how mitochondrial dysfunction contributes to neurodegeneration have
primarily focussed on the role of mitochondria in neuronal energy metabolism. However …

The classification of life forms into a hierarchical system (taxonomy) and the application of
names to this hierarchy (nomenclature) is at a turning point in microbiology. The …

The endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria during eukaryogenesis has long been viewed as
an adaptive response to the oxygenation of Earth's surface environment, presuming a …

We introduce the 12th version of the Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis (MEGA12)
software. This latest version brings many significant improvements by reducing the …