Figure 2
Hypothesis of RNA polymerase II evolution inferred from phylogenetic analyses of RPB1 sequences conserved regions A-H. The tree displayed, after Stiller and Cook [60] had the highest likelihood of all trees sampled from the posterior probability distribution in 106 generations of Bayesian inference. Organisms with genomes included in this study are in larger/bold font, and whether each of the three primary CTD kinases (CDKs7,8,9) are present in this genome, as inferred from global phylogenetic analyses and distributions of CDK kinases (see Fig. 1), are indicated next to the name. Names in blue indicate the presence of repeated heptads at the RPB1 C-terminus, which includes several from protistan organisms that do not conform to the consensus sequence or known structural requirements of the canonical CTD [60]; names in red have no tandem-heptapeptide structure whatsoever. The node supporting a "CTD-clade," in which the consensus sequence and repetitive structure of the CTD are invariably conserved, occurred in 98% of the 8000 trees sampled from the Bayesian posterior probability distribution. See references 31 and 60 for a more complete phylogenetic treatment of the origin and conservation of the CTD.