Figure 5

Taxonomic distribution of sequences from eukaryotic partial genomes. As for Figure 4a, this graphic presents the distribution of partial genome sequences associated with 20 eukaryotic taxa. For each taxon, the three numbers in boxes represent: number of species in group (white numerals on black background); percentage of sequences that are species-specific (that is, do not share any sequence similarity with any other species; black numerals on white background); percentage of sequences that are group specific (that is, share sequence similarity only with one or more sequences from a species in the same taxon (light gray background). The numbers of sequences in each group are given in blue (orange for deuterostomes). Numbers in dark gray boxes indicate the percentage of sequences from each group that have sequence similarity to a gene from the corresponding group. Note that this figure does not attempt to resolve the root of eukaryotes but, as for Figure 4a, has a triangular graphic to represent connections between the three major taxonomic groups - protists, plants and fungi/metazoa. Similarly, as for Figure 4a, this graphic does not provide explicit information on relative times of divergence and care must be taken in comparing numbers between different branches. For example, one study based on molecular clock analysis has estimated the time of divergence of ascomycetes and basidiomycetes to range from 850 to 1,100 Mya, similar to that of protostomes and deuterostomes (880-1,080 Mya) [37]. In this figure, the former might appear to be a relatively recent split while the latter (due to its more basal position within the tree) might appear to be more ancient.