Laura A. Hug

TL;DR: New genomic data from over 1,000 uncultivated and little known organisms, together with published sequences, are used to infer a dramatically expanded version of the tree of life, with Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya included.

TL;DR: This work reconstructed 8 complete and 789 draft genomes from bacteria representing >35 phyla and documented features that consistently distinguish these organisms from other bacteria, infer that this group, which may comprise >15% of the bacterial domain, has shared evolutionary history, and describe it as the candidate phyla radiation (CPR).

TL;DR: Terabase-scale cultivation-independent metagenomics is applied to aquifer sediments and groundwater and 2,540 draft-quality, near-complete and complete strain-resolved genomes are reconstructed, finding that few organisms within the community can conduct multiple sequential redox transformations.

TL;DR: This study sequenced DNA from complex sediment and planktonic consortia from an aquifer adjacent to the Colorado River and reconstructed the first complete genomes for Archaea using cultivation-independent methods, which dramatically expand genomic sampling of the domain Archaea and clarify taxonomic designations within a major superphylum.

TL;DR: A phylogenomic analysis of a dataset of 143 proteins and 48 taxa indicates that Excavata forms a monophyletic suprakingdom-level group that is one of the 3 primary divisions within eukaryotes, along with unikonts and a megagroup of Archaeplastida, Rhizaria, and the chromalveolate lineages.