Lynn Margulis,
[ A New Look at Evolution], (New York, Basic Books, 1998).
"As a species we cling to the familiar comforting conformities of the mainstream. However,'convention' penetrates more deeply then we tend to admit. Even if we lack a proper name for and knowledge of the history of any specific philosophy or thought style, all of us are embedded in our own safe 'reality.' Our outlooks shape what we see and how we know. Any idea we conceive as fact of truth is integrated into an entire style of thought , of which we are usually unaware."
Pp. 2-3.
"Call the cultural constraints 'trained incapacities,' thought collectives,'social constructions of reality.' "
p. 3.
These constraints or limitations are powerful biases that shape our understanding of who we are, what we are doing, where we are and how nature works.
"Like those of everyone else, the scientists hidden assumption
affect his or her behavior, unwittingly directing thought."
p. 3.
Symbiosis, "our lack of awareness of its prevalence."
"symbionts are not obvious, but they are omnipresent"
"we are symbionts on a symbiotic planet."
"Physical contact is a nonnegotiable requisite."
p. 5.
Ivan E. Wallin, he believed that "new species arise though
symbiosis."
Symbiogenesis
fruit flies bread in progressively warmer temperatures, eventually
became distinct form the parent or originating species.
p. 7
"That turned out to have something to do with a parasite." !
"Symbioses are like flashes of evolutionary lightening."
8
Platymonas, single celeld green algae in worms on the coast of
France, Brittany
9
"we animals, all thirty million species of us, emanate from the
microcosm. The microbial worl, the source and well spring of soil and air, informs
our own survival."
10
chlorella, Ophrydium balls of jelly embedding green chlorella algae
Kefir is symbiotic -- 25 different kinds of bacteria and yeast
13
Margulis recalls her Collegiate training by
saying:
"I adored Crow's general genetics course: it changed my life."
The superb science of the University of Chicago...
"Human and other animal consciousness, as well as other types of biological beauty and complexity are properties of our coevolving, pointillist bacterial ancestry."
"cellular interliving,... produced everything from spring-green blooms, to warm, wet mammallian bodies..."
p. 20.
"All beings alive today are equally evolved."
p. 20.
"The findings of the imp-importance of symbiosis in evolution
have forced us to revise the earlier nucleocentric view
of evolution as a bloody struggle of animals.
pp. 19-20.
"...symbiosis, beginning as an uneasy alliance of distinct life-forms,
may underlie the origin of major evolutionary novelty."
p. 20.
"The genes in other words are not necessarily in the nucleus."
"the mitochondria contain their own genes."
p. 22.
"We were taught how, through science, we could go about to answering important philosophical questions."
"a set of methods that are honest, open, accessible, and energetic seems hardly to exist in the 'technological fix' mentality of today."
23
"Realization that the emphasis on connecting genetics to chemistry
had unnecessarily given scientists too narrow a perspective , one overly focused
on the nucleus, was my jumping off point."
25
plastids and mitochondria apparantly had there own
peculiar genes outside of the cell nucleus.
25
"Genetics ... Still seemed to me to be the key to evolutionary
history."
27
hard to distnguish blue green bacterium embedded in sells and
chlorplasts, based on function and behavior.
SET Serial endosymbiosis theory and Symbiogenesis : complex cells, the eukaryots of which we are made --were produced
by symbiosis among primary bacterial forms.
p.29
SET Serial endosymbiosis Theory.
p. 31
3 : Individuality by incorporation.
Symbiosis
coined in 1873, by German botanist, Anton deBary, living together of very different kinds of organisms.
p. 33.
Sym + biosis [Latin:
with + living] ; living with or living together
the existence of two distinct species of organisms in such
a manner that the genetic success of one is tied to the genetic success of the
other.
examples
type of Being producing species consuming species
lichens algae + fungus
corals zooxanthelae algae + animal polyp
legumes cyanobacter root nodules + plants
rhododendron mychorrizae fungus + forest trees (plants)
termites gut bacteria + other gut bacteria
Not a special case in biology but an obvious successful pattern.
Question: Did bacteria build plants, animals and fungus in order to best survive extreme conditions, competition for scarce resources , or to establish new territories in which to thrive?
Spirochetes become undulipodia (motile bacteria become an organelle to move cytoplasm)
p. 35.
Cyanobacteria are relatives of chloroplast
p. 36.
mitochondria are relatives of oxygen breathing bacteria
p. 38.
"names of living beings seem harmless enough."
taxonomy defined as a means of classification for the overwhelming number of different
organisms.
51
Gregory Bateson "THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY."
"...such trees are idealized representaions of the past. In reality the tree of life often grows in on itself."
Anastomosis, branches forming nets"
52
Ivan Wllin's 1920s suggestion that chloroplsts and mitochndria
"originated as symbiotic bacteria." 
53
17th century origin of bacteria as an identifiable group, classified as "animalcules"
"Language can confuse and deceive."
55
"Most bacteria a no more harmful than air..."
Wallins' colleagues confused the map with the territory."
55
The idea of plants, animals, and germs "this idea is as dangerous
as it is prevalent"
56
Ernst Haeckel added protists to van Leeuwenhoek's animalcules
57
Linnean system, late 1700s,
58
Haeckel's championing of evolution
established Monera as the phyla for radiolarians and foraminiferans
59-60
Herbert Copeland
took the term (1860) "protictista" and in 1956 subdivided the
Monera kingdom
60
Whittaker at Cornell refined Copeland's separation of related species in 1959.
Five kingdom system:
61
"All protoctists evolved from bacterial symbiosis."
62
protoctista gave rise to plants, animals and fungus.
/ Zoomastigotes -----------> Animals
Protoctista --- Chlorophytes ----------------------------->Plants
\ Chytrids -------------------------------------> Fungi
63
"viruses today spread genes among bacteria and human and other
cells."
64
Prokarya versus eukarya as major divisions in the five
kingdoms.
64
Carl Woese three domain system: (RNA based, RNA for building) ribosomes differ from one another.
65-66
ribosomes are the place in the cell where transper RNA
inserts a cloned of DNA from the nuclei and the place in the cell where proteins
are constructed from the available amino acids.
"The move toward evolution based taxonomic classification systems has taken hold."
68
seashore mats -- photosynthetic bacteria in worms, such that
the worms lose their capacity to use their mouths, originally used for eating.
"These colorful seaside expanses, called 'microbial mats,' enchant me-- a living landscape just where the sea meets and rolls back and forth over the land"
"death is part of life."
69-70
"The properties of minimal bacterial life, first life, can be
inferred by several approaches."
1 comparatively what do all living things have in common?
70
2 paleobiology -- microfossils in rocks of particular ages.
3 attempt (lab) to remake a cell
4 the bacterial cell, today's minimal unit of life,...is where we must begin."
5 "Prelife, with a suitable source of energy, inside a greasy membrane, grew chemically complex."
Harold J. Morowitz "amusing book on mayonnaise.
71
3.5 billion year old rock from South Africa, Swaziland, oldest
bacterial evidence.
72
| Event | Age | percent | ratio of duration |
| Big Bang singularity, | 20,000 million years ago | 100% | |
| Earth | 4,600 million years ago | 23% | > 1:5 |
| life | 3,500 million years ago | 17.5% | > 1:6 |
"when bacteria wildly reproduce they need no sex to do it. The
bacterial sex that responds to certain environmental contingencies is occasional."
88
Sexual processes, the merger of attracted beings, probably orginated as did the early symbiosis."
"meiotic sex began long after bacterial sex as abbortive cannibalism
in certain protists."
"Symbiogenesis is far more splendid than sex as a generator of
evolutionary novelty."
89
Sex here emerges as a kind of median or medial along a spectrum
of intimacy from
living together to
predation
(touching) <--------------------- Sex ---------------------> living apart (remoteness)
intimacy
separation
"programmed death is a nonnegotiable consequence of the sexual mode of life."
"is linkied intimately with the imperative of plants and animals
to die."
90
"Animals, all of them, an essential 30 million species belonging to nearly forty phyla, revert to a single-cell protist -like stage in each generation....Mortality is the price they pay..."
91
The Cambrian, (Preston Cloud)
"All animals are aerobes."
95
female sex, parthenogenesis.
99
"Abortive cannibalism in single celled protoctists resulted in
a truce called sex."
100
stressed conditions encourage protists to eath anything and everythin.
101
7. Ashore
Star Trek is a depauperate (plantless, bacterialless, machino/macho)
sort of sci fi.
"Ecosystem services"
"An ecosystem is the smallest unit that recycles the biologically
important elements."
105
Carbon and Nitrogen cycles given as examples of essential nutrients
"I prefer the idea that Earth is a network of ecosystems (as a set of communities) over any personification of Mother Gaia."
106
"The material and energy needs of organisms in any ecosystem
are met by recycling all the many chemical compounds required for life maintenance.
106
Land dwellers may owe their hold on dry ground to specific symbioses
between plants and fungi."
"Palnt roots and fungi grow together into bumps on roots called mycorrhizae."
107
fungal fusion to explain the coevelution of green plants, 450 million years ago
107
lichens symbiotic associations of algae, fungi,
bacteria.
108
"animated water", after Vernadsky, the capacity of plants to pump
water 90% of palnts have mycorrhizae associated with their roots.
110
8. Gaia
"What has emerged is the mathematical outline of an overlap between natural selection and global temperature regulation."
"global temperature regulation is a pardigmaticexample of Gaian
regulation."
stabilization of temperature is a product of the daisy world models
127
SET listing of the phylogeny of Moneran descendents:
Prokaryotic organisms:
Monera
Archaebacteria
Eubacteria & cyanobacteria
Eukaryotic organisms:
Protoctista
all algae (red, green, brown
cilliates, slime mold
water moldsFungi
mold
mushrooms
yeasts
root, or mycorrhizaAnimalia animals
sponges
jellyfish
arthropods
snails, molluscs
fish, birds, reptiles
mammalsPlantae plants
mosses
ferns
conifers
flowering plants
p.31, 129.
"We people are just like our planetmates. We cannot put an end to nature; we can only pose a threat to ourselves."
128.
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