Phylogeny and shared conserved inserts in proteins provide evidence that Verrucomicrobia are the closest known free-living relatives of chlamydiae

The evolutionary relationships of Chlamydiales, Verrucomicrobia and Planctomycetes were studied based on phylogenetic trees for a concatenated dataset of 11 widely distributed proteins, as well as conserved inserts in several proteins. In phylogenetic trees, a close relationship of chlamydiae to Verrucomicrobium was supported by different phylogenetic methods. Although the Planctomycetes branched close to the chlamydiae-Verrucomicrobia clade, …