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Published on Sunday, May 1, 2016

The Tree of Life Gets a Makeover

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The Tree of Life Gets a Makeover

If you’re like most of us, you’ve always envisioned the Tree of Life as a tree right? Well, now we can look at it as bacteria that create the trees. Scientists have found that all basis of life is made up of the bacteria and archaea or cells and eukaryotes.

 

These researchers have discovered more than a thousand types of organisms and a group of scientists at UC Berkeley have thought to recreate the tree of life. The tree is made up of archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes. The beautiful image that the tree makes is not meant to make humans feel special. We belong to the low Eukaryotes.

 

The progress for finding the new bacteria can be credited to the new DNA testing that is done now. This testing helps identify new bacteria that vie for a space in DNA. There is questions about the diversity of the organisms since not all bacteria has been found as of yet.

 

Nature.com’s article “A New View of the Tree of Life” claims that there are unusual sequences that have yet to be explained within the DNA of different organisms. With this in mind, the building of the tree of life from bacteria building blocks seems to be a ways away.

 

DNA reconstruction was first started in 1995 and the database continues growing each year. There are 30,437 genomes from all three domains of life. These domains, the bacteria, the archaea, and the eukarya, are being added to as the expansion of genomes is found using shotgun sequencing-based method. This means that the DNA is isolated directly from the environment and sequenced.

 

In this way, the tree of life has been constructed. It is built by using genomes that have been discovered and those that have been known. 3,083 organisms in all build this tree. Since eukaryotes are believed to be evolutionary organisms that are made up of bacteria and archaea, there was initially some question about adding them.

 

If the eukaryotes are hybrids, then that must mean we are hybrid organisms that came from the relation of bacteria and archaea. Researchers call this eukarya a chimera. This can mean that we are made up of parts of others and not fully our own organism. This also means that for humans, we can have more than one blood type. This happens when twins share the same blood across the placenta and typically happens in non-identical twins. As in vitro fertilization happens more and more, the chimeras happen more. Blood is shared by both and one keeps the signs of both blood cells.

 

The tree of life may not be far off after all. As DNA sequencing becomes more advanced, the more scientists learn about genomes. Learning about these building blocks of life is building a tree that is beautiful and full of genomes. Are we closer to discovering the secret of life? Or are we just finding more questions?

 

Researchers are sure that they are close to building the perfect tree of life, because they are close to finding all of the bacteria that reside in our bodies.

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Author: NickRyan

Categories: Blogs, Research, Animals & Wildlife

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