History of Molecular Evolution - Microbial Phylogeny

Microbial Phylogeny

While early work in molecular evolution focused on readily sequenced proteins and relatively recent evolutionary history, by the late 1960s some molecular biologists were pushing further toward the base of the tree of life by studying highly conserved nucleic acid sequences. Carl Woese, a molecular biologist whose earlier work was on the genetic code and its origin, began using small subunit ribosomal RNA to reclassify bacteria by genetic (rather than morphological) similarity. Work proceeded slowly at first, but accelerated as new sequencing methods were developed in the 1970s and 1980s. By 1977, Woese and George Fox announced that some bacteria, such as methanogens, lacked the rRNA units that Woese's phylogenetic studies were based on; they argued that these organisms were actually distinct enough from conventional bacteria and the so-called higher organisms to form their own kingdom, which they called archaebacteria. Though controversial at first (and challenged again in the late 1990s), Woese's work became the basis of the modern three-domain system of Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya (replacing the five-domain system that had emerged in the 1960s).

Work on microbial phylogeny also brought molecular evolution closer to cell biology and origin of life research. The differences between archaea pointed to the importance of RNA in the early history of life. In his work with the genetic code, Woese had suggested RNA-based life had preceded the current forms of DNA-based life, as had several others before him—an idea that Walter Gilbert would later call the "RNA world". In many cases, genomics research in the 1990s produced phylogenies contradicting the rRNA-based results, leading to the recognition of widespread lateral gene transfer across distinct taxa. Combined with the probable endosymbiotic origin of organelle-filled eukarya, this pointed to a far more complex picture of the origin and early history of life, one which might not be describable in the traditional terms of common ancestry.