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PMID: 7723054 Published · ppublish English Comparative Study Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Molecular classification of living organisms.

Journal of molecular evolution ·Vol. 40 ·No. 3 ·1995-03-00 ·Pages 273-9

Saccone C, Gissi C, Lanave C, Pesole G

Abstract

Recent studies in molecular evolution have generated strong conflicts in opinion as to how world living organisms should be classified. The traditional classification of life into five kingdom has been challenged by the molecular analysis carried out mostly on rRNA sequences, which supported the division of the extant living organisms into three major groups: Archaebacteria, Eubacteria, and Eukaryota. As to the problem of placing the root of the tree of life, the analysis carried out on a few genes has provided discrepant results. In order to measure the genetic distances between species, we have carried out an evolutionary analysis of the glutamine synthetase genes, which previously have been revealed to be good molecular clocks, and of the small and large rRNA genes. All data demonstrate that archaebacteria are more closely related to eubacteria than to eukaryota, thus supporting the classical division of living organisms into two main superkingdoms, Prokaryota and Eukaryota.

MeSH Terms
Archaea/genetics Bacteria/genetics Base Sequence Eukaryotic Cells Genes Glutamate-Ammonia Ligase/genetics Markov Chains Molecular Sequence Data Phylogeny Sequence Alignment Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid
Chemicals
Glutamate-Ammonia Ligase
Authors & Affiliations
4 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Saccone C
Dipartimento di Biochimica e Biologia Molecolare, Universitá di Bari, Italy.
Gissi C
Lanave C
Pesole G
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Article Info
Journal
Journal of molecular evolution
Abbr.
J Mol Evol
ISSN
0022-2844
DOI
10.1007/BF00163232
Published
1995-03-00
Pages
273-9
Language
English
Region
Germany
NLM ID
0360051
Subset
IM
Databases
GENBANK
D00513, L10631, M16626, M18966, M20664, M23172, M26107, M33783, M58415, M96798, U03029, X03495, X03931, X04187, X05173, X17523, X52759, X52760, X52842, X53263, X59834, X60161, X65931, X67296, X69822, X70924, Z29560, Z29636
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.1007/BF00163232 View journal details
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