Construction and Deconstruction: Influence of Lateral Gene Transfer on the Evolution of the Tree of Life
Maureen O'Malley
from: Molecular Phylogeny of Microorganisms (Edited by: Aharon Oren and R. Thane Papke). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2010)
Abstract
Efforts to construct the tree of life take their conceptual motivation from Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Until the advent of molecular biology, however, a universal tree of life was well beyond the scope of the data and methods of traditional organismal phylogeny. The rapid development of these methods and bodies of genetic sequence from the 1970s onwards resulted in major reclassifications of life and revived ambitions to represent all organismal lineages by one true tree of life. Subsequent realization of the significance of lateral gene transfer and other non-vertical processes has subtly reconceptualized and reoriented attempts to construct this universal phylogeny. This chapter sets out these shifts of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction, with an eye towards understanding the future of the tree of life read more ...
