No 2 Story of 2023: ID Passes the Dawkins Test evolutionnews.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from evolutionnews.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
E-Mail
IMAGE: Gene transfers (movement of genes between bacterial lineages) have hampered traditional efforts to study bacterial evolution in deep time. Coleman et al. used a new method that combines the vertical. view more
Credit: Gergely J. Szöll?si
The findings, published in the journal
Science today, demonstrate how integrating vertical descent and horizontal gene transfer can be used to infer the root of the bacterial tree and the nature of the last bacterial common ancestor.
Bacteria comprise a very diverse domain of single-celled organisms that can be found almost everywhere on Earth. All Bacteria are related and derive from a common ancestral Bacterial cell. Until now, the shape of the bacterial tree of life and the placement of its root has been contested, but is necessary to shed light on the early evolution of life on our planet.