title: Reconstructing/deconstructing the earliest eukaryotes: how comparative genomics can help.
abstract: We could reconstruct the evolution of eukaryote-specific molecular and cellular machinery if some living eukaryotes retained primitive cellular structures and we knew which eukaryotes these were. It's not clear that either is the case, but the expanding protist genomic database could help us in several ways.
authors.affiliation: Program in Evolutionary Biology, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Dacks
authors.forename: W F
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Doolittle
mesh_terms: D000828:Animal Population Groups / Q000235:genetics; D000818:Animals; D001105:Archaea / Q000235:genetics; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D016384:Consensus Sequence; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000378:metabolism; D005057:Eukaryotic Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D005658:Fungi / Q000235:genetics; D023281:Genomics; D006056:Golgi Apparatus / Q000201:enzymology; D007438:Introns / Q000235:genetics; D016814:Microsporidia / Q000235:genetics; D008928:Mitochondria; D010802:Phylogeny; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics; D013045:Species Specificity; D017381:Spliceosomes; D014244:Trichomonas / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins; C078473:MreB protein, E coli