title: Investigating deep phylogenetic relationships among cyanobacteria and plastids by small subunit rRNA sequence analysis.
abstract: Small subunit rRNA sequence data were generated for 27 strains of cyanobacteria and incorporated into a phylogenetic analysis of 1,377 aligned sequence positions from a diverse sampling of 53 cyanobacteria and 10 photosynthetic plastids. Tree inference was carried out using a maximum likelihood method with correction for site-to-site variation in evolutionary rate. Confidence in the inferred phylogenetic relationships was determined by construction of a majority-rule consensus tree based on alternative topologies not considered to be statistically significantly different from the optimal tree. The results are in agreement with earlier studies in the assignment of individual taxa to specific sequence groups. Several relationships not previously noted among sequence groups are indicated, whereas other relationships previously supported are contradicted. All plastids cluster as a strongly supported monophyletic group arising near the root of the cyanobacterial line of descent.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington 47405, USA. sturner@bio.indiana.edu
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.forename: K M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Pryer
authors.forename: V P
authors.initials: VP
authors.lastname: Miao
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Palmer
mesh_terms: D000458:Cyanobacteria / Q000235:genetics*; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D018744:DNA, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D004275:DNA, Ribosomal / Q000235:genetics*; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000502:physiology*; D020459:Genes, rRNA; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D018087:Plastids / Q000235:genetics*; D012335:RNA, Ribosomal / Q000235:genetics; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D018744:DNA, Plant; D004275:DNA, Ribosomal; D012335:RNA, Ribosomal