Chapter 28, Problem 2ITD

Summary Introduction

To review:

The study shows that green plants, red algae, green algae, and microscopic freshwater algae are grouped into glaucophytes. They are all primary photosynthetic eukaryotes containing plastids, and chloroplast where photosynthesis occurs. Naiara Rodriguez-Ezpeleta from the University of Montreal along with a team tested this assumption. They were already aware that the proteins associated with plastids in cyanobacteria and photosynthetic eukaryotes share some amino acid sequences. So, they sequenced the amino acid in 143 proteins encoded by the nuclear genes of primary photosynthetic groups.

The trees were then compared to check where the overlap occurred and consequently, a summary tree was generated, as given in the figure. The data supports the prediction that glaucophytes and green plants are closely associated with each other, as compared to the other groups in the phylogeny.

Introduction:

Clade is the process of grouping organisms into different taxa, which consists of all the descendants that originated from a common ancestor. A cladogram is used in the interpretation of data generated by a phylogenetic tree.