Research article
Phylogenomic analyses predict sistergroup relationship of nucleariids and Fungi and paraphyly of zygomycetes with significant support
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* Corresponding author: B Franz Lang franz.lang@umontreal.ca
- † Equal contributors
1 Robert Cedergren Centre, Département de biochimie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada
2 Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
3 Present address: Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Bio-molecular Research, Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, 160 College Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3E1, Canada
BMC Evolutionary Biology 2009, 9:272 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-9-272
Published: 25 November 2009Abstract
Background
Resolving the evolutionary relationships among Fungi remains challenging because of their highly variable evolutionary rates, and lack of a close phylogenetic outgroup. Nucleariida, an enigmatic group of amoeboids, have been proposed to emerge close to the fungal-metazoan divergence and might fulfill this role. Yet, published phylogenies with up to five genes are without compelling statistical support, and genome-level data should be used to resolve this question with confidence.
Results
Our analyses with nuclear (118 proteins) and mitochondrial (13 proteins) data now robustly associate Nucleariida and Fungi as neighbors, an assemblage that we term 'Holomycota'. With Nucleariida as an outgroup, we revisit unresolved deep fungal relationships.
Conclusion
Our phylogenomic analysis provides significant support for the paraphyly of the traditional taxon Zygomycota, and contradicts a recent proposal to include Mortierella in a phylum Mucoromycotina. We further question the introduction of separate phyla for Glomeromycota and Blastocladiomycota, whose phylogenetic positions relative to other phyla remain unresolved even with genome-level datasets. Our results motivate broad sampling of additional genome sequences from these phyla.