By now, this kind of thing shouldn’t even be a surprise:
A collaborative study between the groups of Toni Gabaldón, ICREA researcher at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), and Berend Snel at the University of Utrecht, has concluded that the first cell to incorporate a mitochondrion (considered the key step to the increased complexity of eukaryotic cells) already presented eukaryote-like complexity in structure and functions. This scenario serves as a bridge between the signs of complexity observed in some archaeal genomes and the proposed role of mitochondria in triggering eukaryogenesis.
“The acquisition of mitochondria was considered either to be the crucial first step or the last step in the development of eukaryotic cell complexity,” explains Gabaldón. “Our findings show that it was indeed a crucial event, but that it happened in a scenario where cell complexity had already increased.”
For roughly the first half of the history of life on Earth, the only forms of life were the relatively simple cells of bacteria. “Eukaryotic cells are larger, contain more DNA and are made up of compartments, each with their own task,” explains first author Julian Vosseberg. “In that sense, you could compare bacterial cells with a tent, while eukaryotic cells are more like houses with several rooms.”
How and when organisms traded the tent for a house is still a mystery, as there are no intermediate forms. One important moment in evolution was the origin of mitochondria, a component of eukaryotic cells that function as their ‘power plants.” Mitochondria were once free-living bacteria, but during evolution, they were absorbed by the ancestors of today’s eukaryotic cells. As gene duplication probably drove the increase in cell complexity, the researchers attempted to reconstruct the evolutionary events based on these genetic changes.
Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), “Timeline of early eukaryotic evolution unveiled” at Phys.org
Paper. (paywall)
Already complex? No intermediate forms? Where have we heard that before.
“Mitochondria were once free-living bacteria”
this claim is a classic example of Darwian just-so-story…
Like the whole Margulis-endosymbiosis just-so-story…
Darwinian clowns can’t never replicate these events (e.g. endosymbiosis) in their fancy labs… never… all what they have are just-so-stories
This reminds me of detective novels. In those stories the criminal always tries to commit the perfect crime, involving dozens of interlocking sequences of events that must work out precisely to avoid capture and evidence. Sherlock reconstructs the 147 steps of the sequence by deduction from axioms, and realizes that Step 78 failed to account for Uncle McTavish’s unexpectedly late arrival. Aha! Gotcha!
In real life criminals don’t do any of this stuff. They just take things because they enjoy taking things, or kill because they enjoy killing.
Same with cells and plants and animals. Living things live because they enjoy living.
I always confuse mitochondria with midichlorians. Not that it matters under MRT as they’re both imaginary
Evolutionists always confuse imagination for science. Only imagination says eukaryotes evolved from populations of prokaryotes.
I don’t know why the bacteria are so evil they wouldn’t evolve in something else . Look at us ,we evolved from bacteria but now they wouldn’t do the same thing anymore. Bacteria are shameless and against science. Didn’t they hear of Darwin ?
A few notes:
@Martin @1
You beat me to it. You must type faster than I do.
(Mitochondria were once free-living bacteria, but during evolution, they were absorbed by the ancestors of today’s eukaryotic cells)
It is to laugh!
There are observed cases of prokaryotes living in amoebae and even other prokaryotes. But there isn’t any evidence that prokaryotes can join and produce a eukaryote. There are more differences between the two than endosymbiosis can account for.
Wow, that first cell must have been a doozie! All the genetic material needed to work as a prokaryote, plus all the genes needed to switch to eukaryote living, even as the prokaryotes must then have lost those same genes, and then the remaining original genes stayed true for billions of years, unused, until needed for the Cambrian explosion! Isn’t that one of the stories we’ve been told to get around the mathematical difficulties of de-novo genes appearing throughout the ages by Darwinian means?