The prokaryote-eukaryote interface

Abstract

Over the past 30 years the study of the sequences of proteins and nucleic acids has produced almost incredible amounts of information, new concepts, and new avenues of research. The beginning was slow: the first peptide hormones sequenced in the early 1950s, the first cytochrome c (horse) in 1961, the first bacterial ferredoxin in 1964, and the first transfer RNA (yeast alanine tRNA) in 1965. In the past 6 years, the rate of data accumulation has accelerated tremendously, primarily due to technological advances in nucleic acid sequencing techniques. For investigators of biological evolution, the sequence data and the new information on genetic mechanisms would prove to be the best evidence for elucidating relationships among the genomes of living organisms and for deducing phylogenetic history. In particular, they needed evidence to decide between the two hypotheses for the origin of eukaryotic cells. Now, less than 20 years since Margulis renewed the investigation of this problem, comparisons of protein and nucleic acid sequences, especially of the small subunit ribosomal RNAs, have answered this question in favor of the endosymbiotic origin of eukaryotic cells. After briefly discussing some of the concepts that helped resolve this controversy and the problems involved in using sequence data for evolutionary studies, we describe a few examples of useful evolutionary trees.