Understanding how major organismal lineages originated is fundamental for understanding processes by which life evolved. Major evolutionary transitions, like eukaryogenesis, merging genetic material from distantly related organisms, are rare events, hence difficult ones to explain causally. If most archaeal lineages emerged after massive acquisitions of bacterial genes, a rule however arises: metabolic bacterial genes contributed to all major evolutionary transitions.
Keywords: eukaryogenesis; evolutionary transition; lateral gene transfer; prokaryotic evolution; tree of life; web of life.
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