Gene

Biology

Lineage (genetic)

16S ribosomal RNA

Evolutionary biology

Genetics

Phylogenetic tree

Mitochondrial DNA

Genome

Clade

Phylogenetics

Mitochondrion

Most recent common ancestor

Alphaproteobacteria

Nature

Mitochondria are ATP-generating organelles, the endosymbiotic origin of which was a key event in the evolution of eukaryotic cells 1 . Despite strong phylogenetic evidence that mitochondria had an alphaproteobacterial ancestry 2 , efforts to pinpoint their closest relatives among sampled alphaproteobacteria have generated conflicting results, complicating detailed inferences about the identity and nature of the mitochondrial ancestor. While most studies support the idea that mitochondria evolved from an ancestor related to Rickettsiales3-9, an order that includes several host-associated pathogenic and endosymbiotic lineages10,11, others have suggested that mitochondria evolved from a free-living group12-14. Here we re-evaluate the phylogenetic placement of mitochondria. We used genome-resolved binning of oceanic metagenome datasets and increased the genomic sampling of Alphaproteobacteria with twelve divergent clades, and one clade representing a sister group to all Alphaproteobacteria. Subsequent phylogenomic analyses that specifically address long branch attraction and compositional bias artefacts suggest that mitochondria did not evolve from Rickettsiales or any other currently recognized alphaproteobacterial lineage. Rather, our analyses indicate that mitochondria evolved from a proteobacterial lineage that branched off before the divergence of all sampled alphaproteobacteria. In light of this new result, previous hypotheses on the nature of the mitochondrial ancestor6,15,16 should be re-evaluated.

Deep mitochondrial origin outside the sampled alphaproteobacteria