Editorial
Of primordial genomes and cooperative kittens
-
Correspondence: Miranda Robertson not@valid.com
Journal of Biology 2009, 8:52 doi:10.1186/jbiol163
Published: 20 July 2009First paragraph (this article has no abstract)
Since every cell is derived from another cell, and the genetic code is more or less universal – so that life cannot, within the bounds of reasonable probability, have evolved more than once – every living being must ultimately derive from an ancestral cell containing a primordial genome. The recognition of the very large part played by horizontal gene transfer in the evolution of bacterial genomes has, however, lately (and notoriously) undermined any hope we may have cherished of tracing the branches of our genomic ancestry back to their prokaryotic roots. In this issue of Journal of Biology Eugene Koonin and colleagues [1] describe an analysis of phylogenetic trees for 6,901 bacterial genes on the basis of which they conclude that, ancestral gene-swapping notwithstanding, a vertical signal (sic) can in fact be discerned at the deepest levels in the phylogenetic tree, though it may never be possible to trace the branches.