Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2016
We establish links between countable algebraically closed graphs and the endomorphisms of the countable universal graph R. As a consequence we show that, for any countable graph Γ, there are uncountably many maximal subgroups of the endomorphism monoid of R isomorphic to the automorphism group of Γ. Further structural information about End R is established including that Aut Γ arises in uncountably many ways as a Schützenberger group. Similar results are proved for the countable universal directed graph and the countable universal bipartite graph.