Reply to Wang and Chen: An ancient origin of magnetotactic bacteria

Abstract

Our recent paper (1) reports an ancient origin of magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) before or near the divergence between the phyla Nitrospirae and Proteobacteria , which has implications for the Archean geomagnetic field and paleoenvironment. Wang and Chen (2) appear to have misunderstood our paper, noting that we only consider the inference of a magnetotactic ancestor of Proteobacteria and Nitrospirae . However, this is only one of the suggestions in our paper. We do not rule out the possibility of undetected ancient horizontal gene transfer (HGT) between these phyla and clearly mention in our paper that magnetosome gene clusters (MGCs) were “present before the separation of the Nitrospirae … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: weilin0408{at}gmail.com, kirschvink{at}caltech.edu, or yxpan{at}mail.iggcas.ac.cn. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1