Abstract
The origin of the eukaryotic cell represents an enigmatic yet dramatically incomplete evolutionary puzzle. The few pieces of this puzzle that we have managed to identify thus far indicate that the eukaryotic cell most probably emerged via a fusion of an archaeal and an alphaproteobacterial cell. Yet, beyond this, scientific debate is mainly engulfed by speculation, which, to a large extent, is fed by our poor understanding of the identity of these bacterial and archaeal fusion partners. In the current research project, we aim to identify contemporary relatives of the bacterial and archaeal lineages that once founded the eukaryotic cell using novel cultivation-independent genomics and phylogenomics approaches. Till this end, environmental samples that are enriched for the target microbial lineages will be analyzed using metagenomic analyses (based on short- and long-read sequencing technologies). Subsequent state-of-the-art phylogenomic analyses will be used to elucidate the taxonomic affiliation of identified organisms in relation to other archaeal and bacterial lineages, as well as to eukaryotes.
Netherlands