Phylogenomics of Asgard archaea to understand the evolutionary origin of the eukaryotic cell

Complex life on our planet evolved from simpler unicellular microorganisms. Recent studies identified the Asgard archaea as the closest microbial relatives of complex cellular life forms such as plants, animals and fungi. This proposal is set out to study the evolutionary relationship between Asgard archaea and eukaryotes in more detail by using advanced computational analyses of available genome data.