Tree of life

Tree diagrams have first originated in the medieval era for the representation of genealogical relationships. A universal tree of life or tree of life is a model, research tool or a metaphor that is used to describe relationships between organisms and for exploration of human evolution. Charles Darwin has also indicated about the tree of life in his book “The Origin of Species”. He stated, “The affinities of all of the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth”.

The tree of life is described in various formats consisting of different fields such as religious, biological, mythological and philosophical. As the tree of knowledge helps to connect to the underworld and true knowledge, similarly the tree of life is used to connect all types of creation. It is sometimes categorized between world tree and cosmic tree. The tree of life-based on mythology and religion is related to fertility, mortality, culture, folklore, and fiction. Such cultural trees are available for ancient Iran, ancient Mesopotamia and Chinese mythology.

The tree of life has been developed and catalogued by scientists for generations. For hundreds of years, they have been focusing on the collection of species present on planet Earth and their branching to develop their molecular characterization. After a long period of research and analysis, scientists have released about 35000 files based on a decade of research on microbial species. Each file consists of 100 microbial species including human pathogens and environmental strains.

Biologically speaking, when scientists found out that fossil fuel cannot independently demonstrate the ancestral lineage of all animals, they turned towards another way: DNA sequencing and preparing a tree of life. This all started in the 1960s when the genetic sequence was first understood. The tree is created to match the anatomical or morphological characteristics to provide the best proof regarding the reality of macroevolution. In this tree, genes of many organisms are sequenced and “molecular” based phylogenetic trees are constructed. All the assumptions made for the tree flow naturally following the Darwinian Paradigm. This tree consists of three main domains: bacteria, archaea and eukarya. This tree was based on RNA but when DNA also came into the picture, the genetic sequence did not confirm. And different conflicts kept evolving the biological tree of life without any solid solutions.

Tree of life

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