Phylogenomic evidence for a common ancestor of mitochondria and the SAR11 clade
J. Cameron Thrash, Alex Boyd, Megan J. Huggett, Jana Grote, Paul Carini, Ryan J. Yoder, Barbara Robbertse, Joseph W. Spatafora, Michael S. Rappé & Stephen J. Giovannoni
Affiliations
Contributions
Corresponding author
Scientific Reports 1, Article number: 13 doi:10.1038/srep00013
Received 16 February 2011
Accepted 10 May 2011
Published 14 June 2011
Abstract
Mitochondria share a common ancestor with the Alphaproteobacteria, but determining their precise origins is challenging due to inherent difficulties in phylogenetically reconstructing ancient evolutionary events. Nonetheless, phylogenetic accuracy improves with more refined tools and expanded taxon sampling. We investigated mitochondrial origins with the benefit of new, deeply branching genome sequences from the ancient and prolific SAR11 clade ofAlphaproteobacteria and publicly available alphaproteobacterial and mitochondrial genome sequences. Using the automated phylogenomic pipeline Hal, we systematically studied the effect of taxon sampling and missing data to accommodate small mitochondrial genomes. The evidence supports a common origin of mitochondria and SAR11 as a sister group to the Rickettsiales. The simplest explanation of these data is that mitochondria evolved from a planktonic marine alphaproteobacterial lineage that participated in multiple inter-specific cell colonization events, in some cases yielding parasitic relationships, but in at least one case producing a symbiosis that characterizes modern eukaryotic life.
Subject terms: Phylogenetics, Microbial genetics, Environmental microbiology
+++++
