A Kingdom-Level Phylogeny of Eukaryotes Based on Combined Protein Data

Abstract

Current understanding of the higher order systematics of eukaryotes relies largely on analyses of the small ribosomal subunit RNA (SSU rRNA). Independent testing of these results is still limited. We have combined the sequences of four of the most broadly taxonomically sampled proteins available to create a roughly parallel data set to that of SSU rRNA. The resulting phylogenetic tree shows a number of striking differences from SSU rRNA phylogeny, including strong support for most major groups and several major supergroups.