ArticleNature2015
Endosymbiotic origin and differential loss of eukaryotic genes.
Article in Nature, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 158 papers.
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Who cites it
158 citing papers in PubMed, 341 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mitochondrial Genome Reduction and Accelerated Evolution in Planktonic Foraminiferans.MicrobiologyOpen · 2026Article
- Phylogenetic ancestry of Metamonada proteins points to a common origin of mitochondria in all eukaryotes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Evolutionary innovation through fusion of sequences from across the tree of life.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Transient molecular chimerism for exploiting xenogeneic organelles.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Tobacco Rattle Virus Coat Protein Targets Ferredoxin 1 for Degradation.Molecular plant pathology · 2026Article
- Reassessing Interkingdom Horizontal Gene Transfer Suggests Limited Influence on Plant Genomes.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Genome degradation results in nested symbiosis and endosymbiont replacement in cicadas.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Berberine dissociates mitochondrial complex I by SIRT3-dependent deacetylation of NDUFS1 to improve hepatocellular glucose and lipid metabolism.Science China. Life sciences · 2025Article
- Bioenergetics evolution: the link between Earth's and Life's history.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Repressive Cytosine Methylation is a Marker of Viral Gene Transfer Across Divergent Eukaryotes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Hypothesis that ancestral eukaryotes sexually proliferated without kinetochores or mitosis.Journal of cell science · 2025Article
- Chimeric origins and dynamic evolution of central carbon metabolism in eukaryotes.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Surprising effects of differential loss in genome evolution: the last-one-out.FEMS microbiology letters · 2025Article
- Interactions between chloroplast and mitochondrial genomes in 11Frontiers in plant science · 2025Article
- Molecular architecture of giant viruses infecting microbial eukaryotes (protists).Biotechnologia · 2025Review
- Archaeal hemeFrontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- A complete DNA repair system assembled by two endosymbionts restores heat tolerance of the insect host.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Protists and protistology in the Anthropocene: challenges for a climate and ecological crisis.BMC biology · 2024Review
- Review
- Early Diversification of Membrane Intrinsic Proteins (MIPs) in Eukaryotes.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
98 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 6 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Chloroplasts arose from cyanobacteria, mitochondria arose from proteobacteria. Both organelles have conserved their prokaryotic biochemistry, but their genomes are reduced, and most organelle proteins are encoded in the nucleus. Endosymbiotic theory posits that bacterial genes in eukaryotic genomes entered the eukaryotic lineage via organelle ancestors. It predicts episodic influx of prokaryotic genes into the eukaryotic lineage, with acquisition corresponding to endosymbiotic events. Eukaryotic genome sequences, however, increasingly implicate lateral gene transfer, both from prokaryotes to eukaryotes and among eukaryotes, as a source of gene content variation in eukaryotic genomes, which predicts continuous, lineage-specific acquisition of prokaryotic genes in divergent eukaryotic groups. Here we discriminate between these two alternatives by clustering and phylogenetic analysis of eukaryotic gene families having prokaryotic homologues. Our results indicate (1) that gene transfer from bacteria to eukaryotes is episodic, as revealed by gene distributions, and coincides with major evolutionary transitions at the origin of chloroplasts and mitochondria; (2) that gene inheritance in eukaryotes is vertical, as revealed by extensive topological comparison, sparse gene distributions stemming from differential loss; and (3) that continuous, lineage-specific lateral gene transfer, although it sometimes occurs, does not contribute to long-term gene content evolution in eukaryotic genomes.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.