Proving universal common ancestry with similar sequences

Abstract

Douglas Theobald recently developed an interesting test putatively capable of quantifying the evidence for a Universal Common Ancestry uniting the three domains of life (Eukarya, Archaea and Bacteria) against hypotheses of Independent Origins for some of these domains. We review here his model, in particular in relation to the treatment of Horizontal Gene Transfer and to the quality of sequence alignment. © L. de Oliveira Martins and D. Posada, 2012.