Sigh. What makes you think the DNA evidence does back up "the tree of life"? Their ain't no extant tree of life. There's just stuff alive today. Try to make a tree out of todays living organisms. You can't. You have to go to the fossil record. But. Ain't no DNA extractible from those fossils. So, it is not correct to assume that the DNA evidence does back up a "tree of life". All it shows is that yep, everything on earth today is related. (Even extremophiles.)
It isn't? So it is a coincidence that many individual DNA sequences confirm that humans are much more closely related to chimps than to mice? That catfish are much closer to sharks than earthworms?
Any serious and consistent discrepancy here would falsify the theory, which is why I brought it up in the first place.
Please bring the goalposts back into the endzone.