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Review
. 2015 Sep 26;370(1678):20140323.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0323.

The ring of life hypothesis for eukaryote origins is supported by multiple kinds of data

James McInerney  1 , Davide Pisani  2 , Mary J O'Connell  3
Affiliations
Review

The ring of life hypothesis for eukaryote origins is supported by multiple kinds of data

James McInerney et al. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. .

Abstract

The literature is replete with manuscripts describing the origin of eukaryotic cells. Most of the models for eukaryogenesis are either autogenous (sometimes called slow-drip), or symbiogenic (sometimes called big-bang). In this article, we use large and diverse suites of 'Omics' and other data to make the inference that autogeneous hypotheses are a very poor fit to the data and the origin of eukaryotic cells occurred in a single symbiosis.

Keywords: eukaryote; fusion; hybrid; merger; phylogeny; ring of life.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Phylogenetic hypotheses for the highest level relationships of life. On the right are the classes of hypothesis described in the text and on the left are the various inferred path lengths. The colour coding is retained for each hypothesis. (Online version in colour.)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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