PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Matthew W. Brown
AU  - Aaron Heiss
AU  - Ryoma Kamikawa
AU  - Yuji Inagaki
AU  - Akinori Yabuki
AU  - Alexander K Tice
AU  - Takashi Shiratori
AU  - Ken-ichiro Ishida
AU  - Tetsuo Hashimoto
AU  - Alastair G.B. Simpson
AU  - Andrew J. Roger
TI  - Phylogenomics places orphan protistan lineages in a novel eukaryotic super-group
AID  - 10.1101/227884
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 227884
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/03/227884.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/03/227884.full
AB  - Recent phylogenetic analyses position certain ‘orphan’ protist lineages deep in the tree of eukaryotic life, but their exact placements are poorly resolved. We conducted phylogenomic analyses that incorporate deeply sequenced transcriptomes from representatives of collodictyonids (diphylleids), rigifilids, Mantamonas and ancyromonads (planomonads). Analyses of 351 genes, using site-heterogeneous mixture models, strongly support a novel supergroup-level clade that includes collodictyonids, rigifilids and Mantamonas, which we name ‘CRuMs’. Further, they robustly place CRuMs as the closest branch to Amorphea (including animals and fungi). Ancyromonads are strongly inferred to be more distantly related to Amorphea than are CRuMs. They emerge either as sister to malawimonads, or as a separate deeper branch. CRuMs and ancyromonads represent two distinct major groups that branch deeply on the lineage that includes animals, near the most commonly inferred root of the eukaryote tree. This makes both groups crucial in examinations of the deepest-level history of extant eukaryotes.