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Project Progress

Lake and his group continue to make good progress to understand the evolution of life on Earth. Recently we published information obtained from the analyses of the whole genomes of eukaryotes (animals, plants, fungi, and other organisms that consist of large, nucleated cells) and of prokaryotes (single celled organisms lacking nuclei). These studies provided information suggesting that the eukaryotic genome resulted from a fusion of two diverse prokaryotic genomes, and therefore at the deepest levels linking prokaryotes and eukaryotes, the tree of life is actually a ring of life. One fusion partner branches from deep within an ancient photosynthetic clade, and the other is related to the archael prokaryotes.