This website describes our lab's effort to elucidate the origins of the eukaryotes and to understand the tree of life. Here, we explain the problems at hand, describe the history of the research conducted in our lab, and discuss our findings. The chief points to take away from here are the following:

• Ribosome structure shows the most recent ancestor of eukaryotes to be the eocytes.
• Analysis of an insert in EF-1/EF-Tu shows eocytes as the closest relatives to eukaryotes.
• The eocyte tree is supported by other labs' analysis of EF-1/EF-Tu and by ribosomal RNA operon structure.

Introduction
The Diversity of Life
Ribosome Structure
Origin of the Nucleus
Sequence Analysis
Universal Tree of Life
Support for Eocyte Tree
The Eocyte Tree Makes Sense
Conclusions