Perspectiva evolutiva sobre a origem e diversificação da vida celular e a virosfera

 Evolving Perspective on the Origin and Diversification of Cellular Life and the Virosphere 

Anja Spang, Tara A Mahendrarajah, Pierre Offre, Courtney W Stairs Author Notes

Genome Biology and Evolution, Volume 14, Issue 6, June 2022, evac034, 

https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evac034

Published: 26 February 2022 Article history Accepted: 18 February 2022 Published: 26 February 2022 Corrected and typeset: 06 June 2022

The tree is a schematic representation of the relationship of the major domains of life, comprised of the primary domains of Archaea and Bacteria and the secondary domain of Eukaryotes. (Credit: Anja Spang)

Abstract

The tree of life (TOL) is a powerful framework to depict the evolutionary history of cellular organisms through time, from our microbial origins to the diversification of multicellular eukaryotes that shape the visible biosphere today. During the past decades, our perception of the TOL has fundamentally changed, in part, due to profound methodological advances, which allowed a more objective approach to studying organismal and viral diversity and led to the discovery of major new branches in the TOL as well as viral lineages. Phylogenetic and comparative genomics analyses of these data have, among others, revolutionized our understanding of the deep roots and diversity of microbial life, the origin of the eukaryotic cell, eukaryotic diversity, as well as the origin, and diversification of viruses. In this review, we provide an overview of some of the recent discoveries on the evolutionary history of cellular organisms and their viruses and discuss a variety of complementary techniques that we consider crucial for making further progress in our understanding of the TOL and its interconnection with the virosphere.

Key words tree of life, viruses, archaea, bacteria and eukaryotes, eukaryogenesis, diversity and evolution, methodological progress

Significance

Our review provides a timely overview of how recent methodological progress has allowed an updated view on the tree of life and its connection to the virosphere. It covers topics ranging from last universal common ancestor to last eukaryotic common ancestor and the extant diversity of prokaryotic and eukaryotic life as well as viruses. Furthermore, we summarize current developments in the field that can help to make further progress in our understanding of deep evolution in the coming years.

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