William Atkins
Thursday, 20 August 2009 19:40
Science -
Biology
Page 2 of 3
The August 19, 2009 NASA media brief “
NASA Research Reveals Major Insight into Evolution of Life on Earth,” states,
“Humans might not be walking on Earth today if not for the ancient fusing of two microscopic, single-celled organisms called prokaryotes….”
The researcher, Dr. Lake, studied over 3,000 different prokaryotes.
Lake found that
“… two major classes of relatively simple microbes fused together more than 2.5 billion years ago.”
The conclusions of Lake show that life evolved very different due to “fusing” of these two microorgnisms.
The conclusions of his study is written up in the August 20, 2009 paper in the journal
Nature. It is entitled “
Evidence for an early prokaryotic endosymbiosis.” (Nature 460, 967-971 (20 August 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08183)
He states in the abstract to the paper,
“Endosymbioses have dramatically altered eukaryotic life, but are thought to have negligibly affected prokaryotic evolution.”
“Here, by analysing the flows of protein families, I present evidence that the double-membrane, Gram-negative prokaryotes were formed as the result of a symbiosis between an ancient actinobacterium and an ancient clostridium.”
The resulting taxon has been extraordinarily successful, and has profoundly altered the evolution of life by providing endosymbionts necessary for the emergence of eukaryotes and by generating Earth's oxygen atmosphere.”
“Their double-membrane architecture and the observed genome flows into them suggest a common evolutionary mechanism for their origin: an endosymbiosis between a clostridium and actinobacterium.”
Page three concludes.
