The evidence that the tree of life is not rooted within the Archaea is unreliable: a reply to Skophammer et al.
Skophammer et al. [Skophammer, RG, Herbold, CW, Rivera, MC, Servin, JA, Lake, JA. 2006. Evidence that the root of the tree of life is not within the Archaea. Mol Biol Evol, 23, 1648-1651] report evidence suggesting that the tree of life cannot be rooted within the Archaea domain. I have observed that an alignment used in their analysis is not reliable and that, therefore, their conclusions are unjustified.
Di Giulio
Massimo
M
Laboratory of Molecular Evolution, Institute of Genetics and Biophysics Adriano Buzzati Traverso, CNR, Via P. Castellino, 111, 80131 Naples, Napoli, Italy.
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001105:Archaea / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D019843:Archaeal Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020653:Peptide Elongation Factor G / Q000235:genetics; D010444:Peptide Elongation Factor Tu / Q000235:genetics; D016415:Sequence Alignment
D019843:Archaeal Proteins; D020653:Peptide Elongation Factor G; D010444:Peptide Elongation Factor Tu