The Tree of Life Hypothesis has long been used to describe the pattern of diversity observed on Earth as fueled by a branching evolutionary process. And though it remains a hypothesis, to many it is evolutionary dogma, and hence its imperfections are often overlooked. A major weakness of current Tree of Life models is the inability to account for the influence on evolution of the movement of genetic material between species through a process known as horizontal gene transfer (or lateral gene transfer).

In finding a way to overcome this problem, scientists from Ireland and France applied economic concepts to biology and proposed the so-called Public Goods Hypothesis as a potential replacement for the tree hypothesis. The new hypothesis, which was published in Biology Direct, takes into account data and observations describing the ways in which genes move between species. It also has particularly important implications for understanding organisms' evolutionary histories, because it accounts for the fact that the existence of the same genes in different lineages does not necessarily imply a common ancestor.

Mobile genetic elements are thought to play an important role in evolutionary processes. Several types of mobile genetic elements are known -- including jumping genes (or transposons), which were discovered in the 1940s and '50s by American scientist Barbara McClintock. Jumping genes consist of small segments of genetic material that move from one place to another within a genome; they are capable of moving from one species to another via horizontal gene transfer. Other mobile genetic elements shuffled around between organisms include plasmids (extrachromosomal genetic material) and bacteriophages (bacteria-infecting viruses).

Mechanisms such as conjugation, transformation, and transduction facilitate gene transfer among prokaryotes (single-celled organisms, namely bacteria and archaea). However, the mechanism driving the transfer of genes in eukaryotes (organisms with membrane-bound organelles) is believed to be much more complex, since entities must first pass through the cell's outer lipid bilayer and genetic material must pass through the nuclear membrane to reach the nuclear genome. The process of entering the cell likely involves endocytosis -- a process in which organisms carrying mobile genetic elements are engulfed and digested, their genetic elements escaping and being transported to DNA in the cell nucleus.

The new theory recognizes some genes as public goods and others as private goods. Many genes are “public goods,” including genes governing metabolic pathways and antibiotic resistance, as well as genes enabling adaptation to different environments. Genes that are advantageous for an organism may be retained and passed down to offspring, playing a role in natural selection. In this way, the transfer of public goods genes between species has the potential to give rise to numerous, localized branching evolutionary patterns. This means that the Tree of Life itself is only one representation within a larger evolutionary model in which genes move not only vertically, through a species' lineage, but also horizontally, from one species to another.

The Tree of Life model has been repeatedly stretched and bent to incorporate information that does not quite fit, with the result that the picture it paints of the evolution of life on Earth is rather confusing. The notion that mobile genetic elements give rise to much more localized trees -- which collectively fit into a far more dynamic framework that incorporates the transfer of genes between species from different trees -- could be the answer to this problem.

Since its inception with the work of Charles Darwin in the 19th century, the Tree of Life Hypothesis has met with various challenges. For example, new insights including the discovery of ultrasmall eukaryotes, such as ultrasmall algae measuring a mere 20 micrometers across, as well as knowledge of new information on the evolutionary relationships between organisms at the root of the eukaryotic branch of the tree, have rendered the organization of the tree, at its most fundamental levels, problematic. In addition, genetic data does not always match data available from the fossil record, further complicating the placement of various lineages within the tree.

Alongside the Tree of Life, scientists have also developed “networks” of life, which actually preceded Darwin's tree. While abandoned for much of the 20th century in favor of tree models, in the 1990s, the network model regained popularity, spurred in part by evidence for horizontal gene transfer. And now, with the Public Goods Hypothesis, networks could gain the ground they need to supersede the tree concept, incorporating twigs and branches from the latter into a more complete and fluid depiction of the evolution of life on our planet.
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Kara Rogers is the senior editor of biomedical sciences at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. She is also a member of the National Association of Science Writers and a contributor to the Britannica Blog, where she runs a series called Science Up Front. She holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacology/Toxicology, but enjoys reading and writing about all things science. You can follow her on Twitter at @karaerogers.

This post also appears on the Britannica Blog.