Comments on: Are Biologists Watching an Evolutionary Leap: One Life Form Absorbing Another?

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 04:08:24 +0000

Is this article real deductive science or just optimistic assuming that a current theory will, hopefully, prove to be true in a million/billion years? Sounds to me like a theory hoping for future evidence.

By: amphiox

amphiox — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 21:18:41 +0000

How did the Alga get it’s ammonium before running into this bacterium?

From the environment.

Or from other, free-living bacteria that produce ammonium.

Or from the ancestors of this bacterium, back before their association was as intimate as it is today.

By: Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:05:06 +0000

A Portuguese Man o’ War, a kind of siphonophore, is not an ‘it’ but a ‘them’ – a colony of four distinct kinds of organism, each adapted to perform a specific function for the benefit of all but unable to detach from the others and survive on its own. What is perhaps most remarkable of all is that all four sprout from a single egg.

By: Katharine

Katharine — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:32:19 +0000

Considering that the apparent limiting component of their nutrient cycle is nitrogen gas (sunlight will be in abundance for a very long time!), what might this say about the niche a cell with an organelle derived from this bacterium will occupy?

By: Rider

Rider — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:23:03 +0000

I disagree, blindboy. Obviously you’re right that we are not entirely composed of the result of symbiotic events but considering that we are carrying around more non-human dna than human – and couldn’t survive otherwise – I suggest that there are a great many symbiotic relationships involved within a human. Mostly between single celled organisms we call bacteria whose cells greatly outnumber our own.

By: bongo

bongo — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 12:14:08 +0000

and try billion in place of million, there is a big difference

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 06:46:05 +0000

How did the Alga get it’s ammonium before running into this bacterium?

By: blindboy

blindboy — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 04:37:09 +0000

Rider, the processes that led from early eukaryotic cells to humans did not involve further symbiotic events but involved re-organisation within the cells, diversification of cell types and the development of specific tissues, organs and organ systems.

By: Rahim Hankin

Rahim Hankin — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:26:56 +0000

This is nothing new. There are jelly fish native to Palau, Malaysia that have a symbiotic relation with algae that grows on its tentacles. The sunlight indirectly nourished the jellyfish through the algae.

By: Rider

Rider — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 16:04:46 +0000

Imagine if the eukaryotic cell had not gotten together with the blue-green bacterium 1.6 million years ago. Perhaps we would not have plants today. But they did and their bond has never been undone. Imagine how many such symbiotic relationships must have been made to add up to a human being. I wonder what the result will be of the new bond between this alga and bacterium in another million years?