The archaebacteria and eukaryotic origins.

Critical analysis of the phylogeny of prokaryotes is in its infancy. Woese and others have made the startling proposal that methane-producing bacteria and a few others form a phyletically unified group, the Archaebacteria, as old and as diverse (although not now as numerous) as all other bacteria. The only critique of this proposal is inadequate. Here we present an alternative view, that the Archaebacteria were derived from other bacteria and contain the ancestor of a cell which engulfed others, eventually to become the first eukaryote.