The field of microbial phylogenetics has questioned the feasibility of using a tree-like structure to the describe microbial evolution. This debate centres on two main points. First, because microorganisms are able to transfer genes from one to another in zero generations (horizontal gene transfer, or HGT), the use of molecular characters to perform phylogenetic analyses will yield an erroneous...

This review explores the origins, diversity and functions of guanylyl cyclases in cellular organisms. In eukaryotes both cGMP and cAMP are produced by the conserved class III cyclase domains, while prokaryotes use five more unrelated catalysts for cyclic nucleotide synthesis. The class III domain is found embedded in proteins with a large variety of membrane topologies and other functional doma...

Biologists used to draw schematic "universal" trees of life as metaphors illustrating the history of life. It is indeed a priori possible to construct an organismal tree connecting the three major domains of ribosome encoding organisms: Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya, since they originated by cell division from LUCA. Several universal trees based on ribosomal RNA sequence comparisons proposed at...

Fuzzy Decision Tree is becoming increasingly significant as it is applied to areas of different platforms in real life. This paper gives an overview of the applications of fuzzy decision tree in heterogeneous fields. It is being actively used in fields as varied as intrusion detection, flexible querying (modus ponens), analysis of cognitive process (Human Computer Interaction), for user authent...

November 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 11 | e352 Genome analyses are delivering unprecedented amounts of data from an abundance of organisms, raising expectations that in the near future, resolving the tree of life (TOL) will simply be a matter of data collection. However, recent analyses of some key clades in life’s history have produced bushes and not resolved trees. The patterns observed in these ...

We report on some preliminary results of a project using Netmap to visualise the network of genotypes generated in an evolutionary run of Tierra (the tree of life). Netmap is a sophisticated tool for visualising and analysing any dataset containing a network of graph structure. It has been successfully used for fraud detection in a number of commercial datamining projects, in the insurance and ...

It is the great challenge of geomicrobiology to study microorganisms in the context of their environments, both in Earth’s distant past and in the present. Planet Earth and its biosphere have evolved together, and a chronicle of Earth’s ecosystems and their geochemical cycles is recorded in sedimentary rocks spanning billions of years. A relatively new and very powerful approach to read these s...

18 NOVEMBER 2016 • VOL 354 ISSUE 6314 817 I n 2010, a comparison between the genomes of a Neandertal and people today settled what anthropologists and geneticists had debated for decades: Our ancestors had indeed mated with their archaic cousins, producing hybrid children. They, in turn, had mated with other modern humans, leaving their distant descendants—us—with a permanent Neandertal legacy....

The root of the eukaryotic tree is a major unresolved question in evolutionary biology. A recent study marshals mitochondrial genes to place that root between the enigmatic Excavates and all other eukaryotes, providing an interesting new perspective on early eukaryotic evolution.