Comparative biochemistry of CO2 fixation and the evolution of autotrophy

Carbon dioxide fixation is a polyphyletic trait that has evolved in widely separated prokaryotic branches. The three principal CO2-assimilation pathways are (i) the reductive pentose-phosphate cycle, i. e. the Calvin-Benson cycle; (ii) the reductive citric acid (or Arnon) cycle; and (iii) the net synthesis of acetyl-CoA from CO/CO2, or Wood pathway. Sequence analysis and the comparative biochemistry of these routes suggest that all of them were shaped to a considerable extent by the evolutionary recruitment of enzymes. Molecular phylogenetic trees show that the Calvin-Benson cycle was a relatively late development in the (eu)bacterial branch, suggesting that some form(s) of carbon assimilat…

Evolutionary theory: it's on the school syllabus in Mexico

The universal ancestor : an unfinished reconstruction

El cenancestro se define como el ultimo ancestro comun de todos los seres vivos que existen actualmente. Su naturaleza se ha inferido a partir de la identificacion de los genes homologos entre los linajes de arqueas, bacterias y eucariontes. Estas inferencias indican que el cenancestro poseia un sistema de traduccion de proteinas relativamente moderno y era similar en complejidad a una celula actual. Sin embargo, las enzimas claves que se encargan tanto de la replicacion del material genetico como de la biosintesis de membranas celulares no son homologas entre los linajes celulares. Aqui revisamos brevemente la historia del concepto del ultimo ancestro comun y las distintas hipotesis que se…