Transcriptomes of members of the enigmatic eukaryotic phylum, Telonemia

Resolving the eukaryotic tree of life is one of the main aims of evolutionary biology. Currently, there are still many protist lineages that have long been known from early morphological description but remain without clear evolutionary affinities. Telonemia is one such orphan taxon that has proven difficult to place in eukaryote-wide phylogenies in spite of several molecular attempts. The group contains only two named species but has been proposed to form a phylum of its own. In this study, we established cultures of three telonemid species and generated their transcriptomes. We then use a phylogenomics approach to infer with confidence the phylogenetic position of this important eukaryote group解析真核生物生命之树是进化生物学的核心目标之一。目前仍有诸多原生生物支系虽早已通过早期形态学描述为人所知，但其演化亲缘关系始终未能明确。Telonemia便是这类孤立分类群（orphan taxon）之一：尽管已有多项分子生物学研究尝试，但其在全真核生物系统发育（phylogeny）框架中的归属始终难以确定。该类群目前仅包含两个已命名物种，有研究提议将其设立为独立的门级分类单元。本研究成功获得了3个telonemid物种的纯培养物，并获取了它们的转录组（transcriptomes）数据。随后我们采用系统发育基因组学（phylogenomics）方法，可靠地推断出了这一重要真核生物类群的系统发育位置。