Phylogeny and beyond: Scientific, historical, and conceptual significance of the first tree of life

Abstract

History of Woese and Fox et al.

“In this retrospective, we view the 1977 paper by Woese and Fox from three standpoints. First, we discuss the specific accomplishments of this landmark paper and how the program of rsearch initiated and led by Woese from the late 1960s to the present day has spawned a revolution in microbiology and other fields…
“Second, we discuss the place of that paper in the history of evolutionary biology, where its unprecedented use of molecular sequences associated with rRNA provided the first window into the deep timeline of life, one independent of theoretical prejudices that had flawed earlier efforts to classify life.
“Finally we describe how the understandings sparked by the paper are bringing a new face to the study of evolution by compelling biologists to address foundational issues related to the very concepts of species and organism and bringing to the fore the deep limitations of earlier accounts of the evolutionary process.”