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Vertical transmission takes place when the symbiont moves directly from parent to offspring. [22] [23] In horizontal transmission each generation acquires symbionts from the environment. An example is nitrogen-fixing bacteria in certain plant roots, such as pea aphid symbionts. A third type is mixed-mode transmission, where symbionts move ...
Endogenosymbiosis is an evolutionary process, proposed by the evolutionary and environmental biologist Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, in which "gene carriers" (viruses, retroviruses and bacteriophages) and symbiotic prokaryotic cells (bacteria or archaea) could share parts or all of their genomes in an endogenous symbiotic relationship with their hosts.
Secondary endosymbiosis has occurred several times and has given rise to extremely diverse groups of algae and other eukaryotes. Some organisms can take opportunistic advantage of a similar process, where they engulf an alga and use the products of its photosynthesis, but once the prey item dies (or is lost) the host returns to a free living state.
The theory of endosymbiosis, as known as symbiogenesis, provides an explanation for the evolution of eukaryotic organisms. According to the theory of endosymbiosis for the origin of eukaryotic cells, scientists believe that eukaryotes originated from the relationship between two or more prokaryotic cells approximately 2.7 billion years ago.
The biologist Lynn Margulis, famous for her work on endosymbiosis, contended that symbiosis is a major driving force behind evolution. She considered Darwin's notion of evolution, driven by competition, to be incomplete and claimed that evolution is strongly based on co-operation, interaction, and mutual dependence among organisms.
The endosymbiosis theory of organogenesis became widely accepted in the early 1980s, after the genetic material of mitochondria and chloroplasts had been found to be significantly different from that of the symbiont's nuclear DNA. [24] In 1995, English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins had this to say about Lynn Margulis and her work:
A symbiosome is formed as a result of a complex and coordinated interaction between the symbiont host and the endosymbiont. [5] At the point of entry into a symbiont host cell, part of the cell's membrane envelops the endosymbiont and breaks off into the cytoplasm as a discrete unit, an organelle-like vacuole called the symbiosome.
Secondary endosymbiosis results in the engulfment of an organism that has already performed primary endosymbiosis. Thus, four plasma membranes are formed. The first originating from the cyanobacteria, the second from the eukaryote that engulfed the cyanobacteria, and the third from the eukaryote who engulfed the primary endosymbiotic eukaryote. [11]