M.M. Sandin et al. (preprint, 2025) "inferred a timeline of #eukaryoteevolution using molecular clock and birth-death diversification models". They used a "#dataset of 75,975 non-redundant...#taxonomicunits and 77 well-supported fossil calibrations" and reconstructed an #evolutionary #diversification of #eukaryote #crowngroup representatives in the Proterozoic (ca. 2.5 billion to 541 million y. ago).
StefanFWirth
Ref
https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.12.693929
Fig
M.M.Sandin et al.(2025), http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Newly Discovered Organism Could Represent a Whole New Branch in The Tree of Life
It's not every day that biologists announce an entirely new branch of life, and this one has been hiding under their noses for years.
‘We’re All Asgardians’ a talk on the origins of Eukaryotes (us) with implications for our present-day immune systems by Brett Baker, University of Texas, Austin. Dr. Baker inaugurated the EPS Wares Distinguished Public Lecture series.
Eukaryotic cells are most closely related to the 'Hod' branch of the Asgard branch of the Archaea.
#Eukaryote #Archaea #Evolution #UTAustin #McGillIUniversity #EarthSystemScience #WaresLecture
1925,1962: Prokaryote and eukaryote - The book of science
In 1925, Édouard Chatton distinguished prokaryote from eukaryote cell types.
New publication: The European Reference #Genome Atlas: piloting a decentralised approach to equitable #biodiversity genomics. #genomics #eukaryote #sequencing
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-024-00054-6
Earth's billion-year balancing act
Branding seems like it's everywhere today. And it's not just the swoosh on your Nikes or the bitten apple icon on your laptop anymore. Social media influencers craft their personal brands. But is there even branding in science? You bet there is.
"..the oldest #eukaryote-bearing units already show species richness levels similar to those of the much younger & more heavily sampled Tonian period..these oldest eukaryotic assemblages show significant morphological disparity, particularly in #vesicle construction. These high levels of..species richness & morphological disparity suggest that although late Palaeoproterozoic units preserve our oldest record of #eukaryotes, the eukaryotic clade has a much deeper #history"
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/spp2.1538
These #microbes have been thriving without #mitochondria since the age of #dinosaurs!
7 years ago, we identified the first known #eukaryote that has completely lost its mitochondria in a humble inhabitant of #chinchilla's gut - #Monocercomonoides exilis.
Today, we can say with confidence, that this intriguing simplification of the cell is not unique to M. exilis, but shared with many of its relatives. This means that it happened at least 100 million years ago!
https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1011050
Genomics of Preaxostyla Flagellates Illuminates the Path Towards the Loss of Mitochondria
Author summary Mitochondria are nearly ubiquitous components of eukaryotic cells that constitute bodies of animals, fungi, plants, algae, and a broad diversity of single-celled eukaryotes, a.k.a. protists. Many groups of protists have substantially reduced the complexity of their mitochondria because they live in oxygen-poor environments, so they are unable to utilize the most salient feature of mitochondria–their ATP-producing oxidative phosphorylation metabolism. However, for a long time, scientists thought that it is impossible to completely lose a mitochondrion because this organelle provides other essential services to the cell, e.g. synthesis of protein cofactors called iron-sulfur clusters. Detailed investigation of the chinchilla symbiont M. exilis documented the first case of an organism without mitochondrion, and it also provided a scenario explaining how this unique evolutionary experiment might have happened. In this work, we expand on this discovery by exploring genomes of multiple relatives of M. exilis. We show that the loss of the mitochondrion is not limited to a single species but possibly extends to its entire group, the oxymonads. We also compare the predicted metabolic capabilities of oxymonads to their closest known mitochondrion-containing relatives and map out various changes that occurred during the transition to amitochondriality.
The tree of life gets a makeover
Biology’s tree of life has morphed from the familiar classroom version emphasizing kingdoms into a complex depiction of supergroups, in which animals are aligned with a slew of single-celled cousins.
Stefan F. Wirth
Simon Zerafa
Bill Minarik
tomsharp
NIOO-KNAW
💧🌏 Greg Cocks
katch wreck
Lukas VFN 🇪🇺
Mikko Kolkkala
Mikko Kolkkala