ArticleFrontiers in bioinformatics2023
The origin of eukaryotes and rise in complexity were synchronous with the rise in oxygen.
Article in Frontiers in bioinformatics, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Early fossil eukaryotes were benthic aerobes.Nature · 2026Article
- Replicating lipid micelles: a feasible precursor to the origin of life and the earliest appearance of genomes.Human genomics · 2026Review
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- Article
- Eukaryogenesis From FECA to LECA: Radical Steps Along the Way.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Reactive Oxygen Species Across Death Pathways: Gatekeepers of Apoptosis, Ferroptosis, Pyroptosis, Paraptosis, and Beyond.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- The hard steps model and whole Earth-system transitions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- DPANN Archaea and CPR Bacteria: insights into early cellular evolution?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- The more we learn, the more diverse it gets: structures, functions and evolution in the Phosphofructokinase Superfamily.The Biochemical journal · 2025Review
- Chimeric origins and dynamic evolution of central carbon metabolism in eukaryotes.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Completing a molecular timetree of Afrotheria.Frontiers in bioinformatics · 2025Article
- Challenges in Assembling the Dated Tree of Life.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Linear motifs regulating protein secretion, sorting and autophagy in Leishmania parasites are diverged with respect to their host equivalents.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Completing a molecular timetree of primates.Frontiers in bioinformatics · 2024Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
The origin of eukaryotes was among the most important events in the history of life, spawning a new evolutionary lineage that led to all complex multicellular organisms. However, the timing of this event, crucial for understanding its environmental context, has been difficult to establish. The fossil and biomarker records are sparse and molecular clocks have thus far not reached a consensus, with dates spanning 2.1-0.91 billion years ago (Ga) for critical nodes. Notably, molecular time estimates for the last common ancestor of eukaryotes are typically hundreds of millions of years younger than the Great Oxidation Event (GOE, 2.43-2.22 Ga), leading researchers to question the presumptive link between eukaryotes and oxygen. We obtained a new time estimate for the origin of eukaryotes using genetic data of both archaeal and bacterial origin, the latter rarely used in past studies. We also avoided potential calibration biases that may have affected earlier studies. We obtained a conservative interval of 2.2-1.5 Ga, with an even narrower core interval of 2.0-1.8 Ga, for the origin of eukaryotes, a period closely aligned with the rise in oxygen. We further reconstructed the history of biological complexity across the tree of life using three universal measures: cell types, genes, and genome size. We found that the rise in complexity was temporally consistent with and followed a pattern similar to the rise in oxygen. This suggests a causal relationship stemming from the increased energy needs of complex life fulfilled by oxygen.
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