“…To provide a global overview of the evolution of the FtsZ/tubulin protein family, we reconstructed a phylogeny of representative sequences representing the diversity of subfamilies, their relationships, and their domain architecture ( Figure 1 ). The FtsZ/tubulin protein family is mainly composed of prokaryotic FtsZ [including mitochondrial ( Leger et al, 2015 ) and chloroplastic ( TerBush et al, 2013 ) ones], eukaryotic tubulins [including prokaryotic sequences from Asgardarchaeota ( Akıl et al, 2022 ) and Verrucomicrobia ( Schlieper et al, 2005 )], archaeal paralogs closely related to tubulins [including CetZ ( Duggin et al, 2015 ), artubulins ( Yutin and Koonin, 2012 ), and other bacterial and archaeal sequences not included in this tree such as the plasmidic TubZ found in Firmicutes ( Larsen et al, 2007 )], and divergent homologs bearing the tubulin_2 Pfam domain, which were used to root the tree. This latter group, here called FtsZ-like, displayed diverse domain composition and poorly aligned positions, and given its sparse distribution in prokaryotes, domain architecture, and genomic synteny, its evolutionary history is unlikely to be directly related to the one of the FtsZ/tubulin protein family ( Makarova and Koonin, 2010 ).…”