This is a series of postings that describe the Three Domain Hypothesis. The Three Domain Hypothesis is the idea that life is divided into three domains—bacteria, archaebacteria, and eukaryotes—and that the archaebacteria and eukaryotes share a common ancestor. An example of this tree of life is shown on the Dept. of Energy (USA) Joint Genome Initiative website [JGI Microbial Genomes] (left).
The hypothesis was promoted by Carl Woese in the 1980's but the pure form has now been abandoned and replaced with a “net of life” concept of early evolution as shown in the figure below. This figure is taken from Ford Doolittle's Scientific American article "Uprooting the Tree of Life" (February 2010). © Scientific Pakistan
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