ArticleCurrent biology : CB2017
An Early-Branching Freshwater Cyanobacterium at the Origin of Plastids.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 122 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
122 citing papers in PubMed, 312 citations in OpenAlex.
- Transfer of chloroplastSynthetic and systems biotechnology · 2027Article
- Metabolic cues are the main drivers for the differentiation of chloroplasts into chromoplasts and other plastid types.Journal of experimental botany · 2026Review
- A glance at the hidden diversity of Rubisco and CO2-concentrating mechanisms in cyanobacteria.Plant physiology · 2026Article
- Chemical modulation of chloroplast de- and redifferentiation reveals a role for the SAL1-PAP retrograde pathway in facilitating plastid transitions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Nucleomorph phylogenomics suggests a deep and ancient origin of cryptophyte plastids within Rhodophyta.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Magnetoreception in a freshwater ciliate arises from endosymbiosis.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Evidence of Relaxed Selection in the Mitochondrial Genomes of Phototrophic Paulinella Lineages.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- The cyanobacterial ESCRT-III protein IM30 forms biomolecular condensates at physiologically relevant conditions.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- Mass spectrometry reveals the evolutionary conservation of phycobiliprotein complexes.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Bioinformatic Analyses of the Ataxin-2 Family Since Algae Emphasize Its Small Isoforms, Large Chimerisms, and the Importance of Human Exon 1B as Target of Therapies to Prevent Neurodegeneration.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Stages of biomolecular condensate formation in pro-β-carboxysome assembly.Nature plants · 2026Article
- Global metagenomics reveals plastid diversity and unexplored algal lineages.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Review
- Identification of a deep-branching lineage of algae using environmental plastid genomes.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Nuclear genome sequencing reveals the highly intron-rich architecture of the chlorarachniophyte alga Amorphochlora amoebiformis.DNA research : an international journal for rapid publication of reports on genes and genomes · 2025Article
- Rubisco is slow across the tree of life.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Molecular Phylogeny of the SELMA Translocation Machinery Recounts the Evolution of Complex Photosynthetic Eukaryotes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- A diverse Palaeoproterozoic microbial ecosystem implies early eukaryogenesis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Molecular and biochemical insights from natural and engineered photosynthetic endosymbiotic systems.Current opinion in chemical biology · 2025Review
- Distinct cell division features inJournal of bacteriology · 2025Review
62 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Photosynthesis evolved in eukaryotes by the endosymbiosis of a cyanobacterium, the future plastid, within a heterotrophic host. This primary endosymbiosis occurred in the ancestor of Archaeplastida, a eukaryotic supergroup that includes glaucophytes, red algae, green algae, and land plants [1-4]. However, although the endosymbiotic origin of plastids from a single cyanobacterial ancestor is firmly established, the nature of that ancestor remains controversial: plastids have been proposed to derive from either early- or late-branching cyanobacterial lineages [5-11]. To solve this issue, we carried out phylogenomic and supernetwork analyses of the most comprehensive dataset analyzed so far including plastid-encoded proteins and nucleus-encoded proteins of plastid origin resulting from endosymbiotic gene transfer (EGT) of primary photosynthetic eukaryotes, as well as wide-ranging genome data from cyanobacteria, including novel lineages. Our analyses strongly support that plastids evolved from deep-branching cyanobacteria and that the present-day closest cultured relative of primary plastids is Gloeomargarita lithophora. This species belongs to a recently discovered cyanobacterial lineage widespread in freshwater microbialites and microbial mats [12, 13]. The ecological distribution of this lineage sheds new light on the environmental conditions where the emergence of photosynthetic eukaryotes occurred, most likely in a terrestrial-freshwater setting. The fact that glaucophytes, the first archaeplastid lineage to diverge, are exclusively found in freshwater ecosystems reinforces this hypothesis. Therefore, not only did plastids emerge early within cyanobacteria, but the first photosynthetic eukaryotes most likely evolved in terrestrial-freshwater settings, not in oceans as commonly thought.
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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.