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eukaryote

Also known as Eukarya, Eukaryota, eukaryotes

The eukaryotes () are the domain of Eukaryota or Eukarya, organisms whose cells have a membrane-bound nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, seaweeds, and many unicellular organisms are eukaryotes. They constitute a major group of life forms alongside the two groups of prokaryotes: the Bacteria and the Archaea. Eukaryotes represent a small minority of the number of organisms, but given their generally much larger size, their collective global biomass is much larger than that of prokaryotes.

OverviewAI-generated

Eukaryota is a domain within the classification of organisms, serving as a subclass of organism and an instance of a taxon. Its parent taxa are Biota and Cytota. The term is also referred to by common names such as eukarionty, organizmy eukariotyczne, and organizmy jądrowe. The standard pronunciation is represented by the IPA transcription ˈjukɛɚiˈɑtə.

The temporal range of this group begins in the Paleoproterozoic era, starting approximately 2700 million years ago. It is included in the topic’s main category, Category:Eukaryotes, and has a corresponding Commons category. The subject is listed on the Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4 focus list and is referenced by 7,146 other encyclopedia articles.

Synthesized by Vinony from 18 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, PubMed, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Research

29,883,769 papers

Endosymbiotic theories for eukaryote origin.ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Martin WF, Garg S, Zimorski VDOI: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0330
Isolation of an archaeon at the prokaryote-eukaryote interface.Nature · 2020Imachi H, Nobu MK, Nakahara N et al.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1916-6
Too Much Eukaryote LGT.ReviewBioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2017Martin WFDOI: 10.1002/bies.201700115
Pitfalls in gut single-cell eukaryote research.ReviewTrends in parasitology · 2025Tito Tadeo RY, Stensvold CRDOI: 10.1016/j.pt.2024.12.011
Emerging Role of Eukaryote Ribosomes in Translational Control.ReviewInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2019Dalla Venezia N, Vincent A, Marcel V et al.DOI: 10.3390/ijms20051226
The New Tree of Eukaryotes.ReviewTrends in ecology & evolution · 2020Burki F, Roger AJ, Brown MW et al.DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2019.08.008
Co-transcriptional gene regulation in eukaryotes and prokaryotes.ReviewNature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2024Shine M, Gordon J, Schärfen L et al.DOI: 10.1038/s41580-024-00706-2
Endosymbiosis and Eukaryotic Cell Evolution.ReviewCurrent biology : CB · 2015Archibald JMDOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.07.055

via PubMed

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Encyclopedic overview

19 sections

Contents

Etymology
Diversity
Distinguishing features
Nucleus
Biochemistry
Internal membranes
Mitochondria
Plastids
Cytoskeletal structures
Cell wall
Sexual reproduction
Evolution
History of classification
Phylogeny
Origin of eukaryotes
Fossils
See also
References
External links

The eukaryotes emerged within the archaeal phylum Promethearchaeota. Ignoring mitochondrial DNA (which is bacterial rather than archaeal), this would imply only two domains of life, Bacteria and Archaea, with eukaryotes incorporated among the Archaea. Eukaryotes first emerged during the Paleoproterozoic, likely as flagellated cells. The leading evolutionary theory is they were created by symbiogenesis between an anaerobic Promethearchaeota archaeon and an aerobic proteobacterium, which formed the mitochondria. A second episode of symbiogenesis with a cyanobacterium created the plants, with chloroplasts.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “eukaryote” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.