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Perspective | Open Access

The expanding Asgard archaea invoke novel insights into Tree of Life and eukaryogenesis

Zhichao Zhou1,#, Yang Liu2,3,#, Karthik Anantharaman1, Meng Li2,3, ( )
Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Archaeal Biology Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Marine Microbiome Engineering, Institute for Advanced Study, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

#Zhichao Zhou and Yang Liu contributed equally to this study.

Edited by Li Huang, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Show Author Information

Abstract

The division of organisms on the Tree of Life into either a three-domain (3D) tree or a two-domain (2D) tree has been disputed for a long time. Ever since the discovery of Archaea by Carl Woese in 1977 using 16S ribosomal RNA sequence as the evolutionary marker, there has been a great advance in our knowledge of not only the growing diversity of Archaea but also the evolutionary relationships between different lineages of living organisms. Here, we present this perspective to summarize the progress of archaeal diversity and changing notion of the Tree of Life. Meanwhile, we provide the latest progress in genomics/physiology-based discovery of Asgard archaeal lineages as the closest relative of Eukaryotes. Furthermore, we propose three major directions for future research on exploring the “next one” closest Eukaryote relative, deciphering the function of archaeal eukaryotic signature proteins and eukaryogenesis from both genomic and physiological aspects, and understanding the roles of horizontal gene transfer, viruses, and mobile elements in eukaryogenesis.

Keywords

Tree of LifearchaeaCarl Woeseeukaryogenesis

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mLife
Volume 1 Issue 4,
December 2022
Pages 374-381
DOI: 10.1002/mlf2.12048
Cite this article:
Zhou Z, Liu Y, Anantharaman K, et al. The expanding Asgard archaea invoke novel insights into Tree of Life and eukaryogenesis. mLife, 2022, 1(4): 374-381. https://doi.org/10.1002/mlf2.12048

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Received: 01 November 2022
Accepted: 13 November 2022
Published: 18 December 2022
© 2022 The Authors. mLife published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. on behalf of Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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