Post 1: A new tree of life 🌳

I’ve been thinking for a while about posting the best articles I’ve read and that I would like more people to read. If anyone wants to discuss or point out an error in my post, go ahead! To see if I read the articles correctly. So apparently, with this start, a habit is born 🙂

Jillian Banfield and Laura Hug are two of the main authors. Their main line is ecogenomics, although they have many other derivatives. In 2016, they published “A new view of the tree of life,” an article where “for the first time” a tree of life is reconstructed in the metagenomic era. A really cool tree that took about 5 months of computation on the CIPRESS supercomputer for its inference. They discuss many things, highlighting above all how diverse prokaryotes really are (Tree A) and the position we hold next to the Asgardian archaea, basically our current cousins.

In early 2018, Jillian and Cindy published “Major New Microbial Groups…,” an update to the 2016 tree, which includes more genomes of microbes that cannot be cultured and that have been detected thanks to metagenomics (Tree B). If we compare the trees, we see that there is a slight change, but apparently the topology remains the same. At least until the discovery of a possible new and large group like the super phyla of CPR bacteria or DPANN archaea.

These are excellent articles with which to learn mainly about the diversity of prokaryotes and the new groups that have been discovered in the last 5 years. That’s all for my report 🙂

Refs:

1. A new view of the tree of life
2. Major New Microbial Groups Expand Diversity and Alter our Understanding of the Tree of Life