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Happy to share the latest manuscript from our lab, in which we propose that eukaryotes evolved from a genomic chimera of Asgard archaea and giant viruses.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.22.590592v1

This is a controversial topic, but we believe we have strong evidence to suggest a critical viral role in eukaryogenesis.

#viruses #protists #eukaryotes #evolution #TreeOfLIfe #archaea


Chimeric Origin of Eukaryotes from Asgard Archaea and Ancestral Giant Viruses

The details surrounding the evolution of complex cells remain some of the most enduring mysteries in biology.
bioRxiv
#Evolution #protists #viruses #eukaryotes #archaea #TreeOfLife
in reply to Frank Aylward

Frank Aylward
Frank Aylward
• •
Over the last decade, strong evidence has accumulated that Asgard archaea are the closest cellular relatives of eukaryotes, but it has remained unclear why some eukaryotic genes, such as multi-subunit RNA polymerase and some DNA polymerase subunits, do not show clear affinity to archaea (i.e. they support a 3-domain tree). We propose that these 3D genes were acquired from viruses, and that eukaryotes are therefore a archaeal-virus chimera.
in reply to Frank Aylward

Frank Aylward
Frank Aylward
• •

As bizarre as this all sounds, I believe we have strong phylogenetic evidence supporting this model. Importantly, this model has also been proposed before by Phil Bell based on first principles or eukaryotic organization and similarities between the nucleus and virus factories formed by viruses during infection

https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.858064

in reply to Frank Aylward

naturepoker
naturepoker
• •
absolutely looking forward to studying the paper. Shocked me awake at 1:30 am 😀
in reply to Frank Aylward

Albert Cardona
Albert Cardona
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How cool is that. Been looking for a paper I read 15 or 20 years ago proposing a viral theory of DNA origin, whereby an inserted DNA virus on an RNA genome would then replicate the whole bacterial genome as DNA, and the bacterium became dependent on that insertion from then on. Will read yours and Phil Bell’s to see if I can find a reference to it.
in reply to Albert Cardona

Frank Aylward
Frank Aylward
• •
@albertcardona thanks! Patrick Forterre has published some similar work on how viruses led to the emergence of DNA https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16476498/

The origin of viruses and their possible roles in major evolutionary transitions - PubMed

Viruses infecting cells from the three domains of life, Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya, share homologous features, suggesting that viruses originated very early in the evolution of life. The three current hypotheses for virus origin, e.g.
PubMed
@Albert Cardona

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