Mariposa, J. M. S.

Date: 02/12/24
BS Med Bio 1B3 Professor: Lea M. Camangeg
MTh 4:00pm – 8:30pm

Lynn Margulis and the endosymbiont hypothesis: 50 years later

By: Michael W. Gray

Synopsis:
The endosymbiont hypothesis is a theory proposed by Lynn Margulis where she
stated that some prokaryotic cell organelles evolve from prokaryotes, organelles such
as mitochondrion and plastids. Michael W. Gray, wrote this article in order to analyze
Margulis’ article. He wanted to point out that before, this publication did not have an
auspicious beginning, reportedly having been rejected by more than a dozen journals
before eventually finding a home (Archibald, 2014). “Now it is regarded as marking the
modern renaissance of the endosymbiotic theory”, he stated in his article.

Critical Points:
Gray's article was all about acknowledging Lynn's work. He focuses on writing down
a detailed explanation of the theory and is easy for the biologist to understand but kind
of difficult for those who do not know much about biology. He started talking about how
Lynn's work is not accepted in the beginning. The reason is simple: no genome has
been associated with the eukaryotic flagellar apparatus despite efforts to find one
(Johnson and Rosenbaum, 1991).

The endosymbiont hypothesis today is now followed by scientists in the field of

evolution. It has now been firmly established that mitochondria and plastids, the
classical membrane-bound organelles of eukaryotic cells, evolved from bacteria by
endosymbiosis. In the case of mitochondria, evidence points very clearly to an
endosymbiont of α-proteobacterial ancestry (John, 2015). And it is through the genomes
contained in the mitochondrion and the plastid—the genes they harbor and how they
are arranged and expressed—that we know with a high degree of certainty from
whence these organelles originated: the bacterial clades α-Proteobacteria and
Cyanobacteria, respectively (Gray and Doolittle, 1982; Gray, 1992).
Relevance to the Society:

As I stated before, this is now being followed by scientists, making it essential to

develop our knowledge in the field of biology and evolution. There are still some
unanswered questions about this theory. Endosymbiosis is an idea that provided a
remarkable amount of explanatory power about the origins of eukaryotic organelles. But
it also promoted a number of assumptions that have also been influential, but are less
well-examined (Patrick and John, 2017). This will lead to potential future research about
endosymbiosis.

References:

Archibald JM (2014). One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the Evolution of
Complex Life, New York: Oxford University Press.

Gray MW, Doolittle WF (1982). Has the endosymbiont hypothesis been proven?
Microbiol Rev 46, 1–42.

John M Archibald (2015) Current Biology 25 (19), R911-R921

Johnson KA, Rosenbaum JL (1991). Basal bodies and DNA. Trends Cell Biol 1, 145–
149.

Patrick J Keeling, John P McCutcheon (2017) Journal of Theoretical Biology 434, 75-79