Different genes in the same eukaryotic organism do not all share the same ancestor. Around three-quarters of eukaryotic genes that have prokaryotic homologues apparently have bacterial ancestry, whereas the remaining quarter seem to derive from archaea. That’s true of humans, but we are not alone. Yeasts are remarkably similar; so too are fruit flies, sea urchins and cycads. At the level of our genomes, it seems that all eukaryotes are monstrous chimeras.
