Mitochondria are ATP-generating organelles, the endosymbiotic origin of which was a key event in the evolution of eukaryotic cells . Despite strong phylogenetic evidence that mitochondria had an alphaproteobacterial ancestry , 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 Rickettsiales, an order that includes several host-associated pathogenic and endosymbiotic lineages, others have suggested that mitochondria evolved from a free-living group. 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 ancestor should be re-evaluated.

Eukaryogenesis is one of the most enigmatic evolutionary transitions, during which simple prokaryotic cells gave rise to complex eukaryotic cells. While evolutionary intermediates are lacking, gene duplications provide information on the order of events by which eukaryotes originated. Here we use a phylogenomics approach to reconstruct successive steps during eukaryogenesis. We found that gene duplications roughly doubled the proto-eukaryotic gene repertoire, with families inherited from the Asgard archaea-related host being duplicated most. By relatively timing events using phylogenetic distances we inferred that duplications in cytoskeletal and membrane trafficking families were among the earliest events, whereas most other families expanded predominantly after mitochondrial endosymbiosis. Altogether, we infer that the host that engulfed the proto-mitochondrion had some eukaryote-like complexity, which drastically increased upon mitochondrial acquisition. This scenario bridges the signs of complexity observed in Asgard archaeal genomes to the proposed role of mitochondria in triggering eukaryogenesis.

The evolution of obligate host-association of bacterial symbionts and pathogens remains poorly understood. The Rickettsiales are an alphaproteobacterial order of obligate endosymbionts and parasites that infect a wide variety of eukaryotic hosts, including humans, livestock, insects and protists. Induced by their host-associated lifestyle, Rickettsiales genomes have undergone reductive evolution, leading to small, AT-rich genomes with limited metabolic capacities. Here we uncover eleven deep-branching alphaproteobacterial metagenome assembled genomes from aquatic environments, including data from the Tara Oceans initiative and other publicly available datasets, distributed over three previously undescribed Rickettsiales-related clades. Phylogenomic analyses reveal that two of these clades, Mitibacteraceae and Athabascaceae, branch sister to all previously sampled Rickettsiales. The third clade, Gamibacteraceae, branch sister to the recently identified ectosymbiotic ‘Candidatus Deianiraea vastatrix’. Comparative analyses indicate that the gene complement of Mitibacteraceae and Athabascaceae is reminiscent of that of free-living and biofilm-associated bacteria. Ancestral genome content reconstruction across the Rickettsiales species tree further suggests that the evolution of host association in Rickettsiales was a gradual process that may have involved the repurposing of a type IV secretion system.