Woese and Fox's 1977 paper on the discovery of the Archaea triggered a revolution in the field of evolutionary biology by showing that life was divided into not only prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Rather, they revealed that prokaryotes comprise two distinct types of organisms, the Bacteria and the Archaea. In subsequent years, molecular phylogenetic analyses indicated that eukaryotes and the Archaea represent sister groups in the tree of life. During the genomic era, it became evident that eukaryotic cells possess a mixture of archaeal and bacterial features in addition to eukaryotic-specific features. Although it has been generally accepted for some time that mitochondria descend from endosymbiotic alphaproteobacteria, the precise evolutionary relationship between eukaryotes and archaea has continued to be a subject of debate. In this Review, we outline a brief history of the changing shape of the tree of life and examine how the recent discovery of a myriad of diverse archaeal lineages has changed our understanding of the evolutionary relationships between the three domains of life and the origin of eukaryotes. Furthermore, we revisit central questions regarding the process of eukaryogenesis and discuss what can currently be inferred about the evolutionary transition from the first to the last eukaryotic common ancestor.

中文翻译：

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古细菌和真核生物的起源

伍斯和福克斯（Woese and Fox）于1977年发表的有关古细菌的发现的论文通过证明生命不仅被分为原核生物和真核生物而引发了进化生物学领域的一场革命。相反，他们揭示了原核生物包含两种截然不同的生物体，即细菌和古细菌。在随后的几年中，分子系统发育分析表明，真核生物和古细菌代表着生命之树中的姐妹群。在基因组时代，很明显的是，真核细胞除了具有真核特异性特征外，还具有古细菌和细菌特征的混合物。尽管线粒体起源于内共生α-蛋白细菌已经被接受了一段时间，但真核生物和古细菌之间确切的进化关系一直是争论的话题。在这篇评论中，我们概述了生命树形态变化的简要历史，并考察了最近发现的各种古细菌谱系如何改变了我们对生命三个领域与真核生物起源之间进化关系的理解。此外，我们重新审视了有关真核生物发生过程的核心问题，并讨论了目前可以推断出从第一个真核生物祖先到最后一个真核生物祖先的进化过渡。