The age of the common ancestor of eukaryotes and prokaryotes: Statistical inferences

被引：23

作者：

Gu, X

机构：

[1] Inst. of Molec. Evol. Genetics, 328 Mueller Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

来源：

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION | 1997年 / 14卷 / 08期

关键词：

gamma distribution; evolutionary distance; substitution patterns; rate variation; common ancestor;

D O I：

10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a025827

中图分类号：

Q5 [生物化学]; Q7 [分子生物学];

学科分类号：

071010 ; 081704 ;

摘要：

In this paper, a simple distance measure was used to estimate the age (T) of the common ancestor of eukaryotes and prokaryotes which takes the rate variation among sites and the pattern of amino acid substitutions into account. Our new estimate of T based on Doolittle et al.'s data is about 2.5 billion years ago (Ga), with 95% confidence interval from 2.1 to 2.9 Ga. This result indicates (1) that Doolittle et al.'s estimate (similar to 2.0 Ga) seems too recent, and (2) that the traditional view about the divergence time between eukaryotes and prokaryotes (T-0 = 3.5 Ga) can be rejected at the 0.1% significance level.

引用

页码：861 / 866

页数：6

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