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Controversy on chloroplast origins
Author(s) -
Lockhart Peter J.,
Penny David,
Hendy Michael D.,
Howe Christopher J.,
Beanland Timothy J.,
Larkum Anthony W.D.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/0014-5793(92)81231-a
Subject(s) - chloroplast , chemistry , computational biology , biology , biochemistry , gene
Controversy exists over the origins of photosynthetic organelles in that contradictory trees arise from different sequence, biochemical and ultrastructural data sets. We propose a testable hypothesis which explains this inconsistency as a result of the differing GC contents of sequences. We report that current methods of tree reconstruction tend to group sequences with similar GC contents irrespective of whether the similar GC content is due to common ancestry or is independently acquired, Nuclear encoded sequences (high GC) give different trees from chloroplast encoded sequences (low GC). We find that current data is consistent with the hypothesis of multiple origins for photosynthesis organelles and single origins for each type of light harvesting complex.