Month: September 2022

MYTH SUPPORTED. "In the years that followed Carrel's observations, support for the interpretation of his experiments seemed to emerge from several laboratories where it was observed that cell populations from other species, including humans, also seemed to have the striking ability to replicate apparently indefinitely." http://protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/contents/v62/full/62111380.html View in LinkedIn

THE FLAW. "By the late l960's it became apparent to us and others that Carrel's claim to have cultured chick fibroblast cells for 34 years was spurious. It had to be assumed that Carrel's chick cultures consisted of normal cells because no one has ever reported a spontaneously arising transformed chicken cell strain free of oncogenic viruses. Several reports of alleged immortal chick cell lines have appeared, but all have been associated with oncogenic viruses, chemical carcinogens or radiation." http://protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/contents/v62/full/62111380.html View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE is a curious story, wherein an old fashioned marine biologist, Donald Williamson, presents rather radical ideas that his peers vilify, hang draw and quarter. Williamson obtained the support of Lynn Margulis for a theory that rather closely resembles her own (endosymbiosis) that was equally vilified before going prime time. This story is less about the veracity of Williamson's theory than about how much scientists hate change. https://lnkd.in/d-vV-rd View in LinkedIn

TORNARÍA LARVAE, a video of these other-worldly little creatures that could as easily be from Mars. They are the daily companions of marine biologists like Doc in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. https://lnkd.in/d-k_UHZ View in LinkedIn

LYNN MARGULIS won fame and notoriety for her evolutionary theory of engulfment leading to the formation of the mitochondria and chloroplast. "Margulis transformed and fundamentally framed current understanding of the evolution of cells with nuclei – an event Ernst Mayr called "perhaps the most important and dramatic event in the history of life" – by proposing it to have been the result of symbiotic mergers of bacteria." (Bacteria of different species, hybrids). https://lnkd.in/et3gdfj View in LinkedIn

MARGULIS'S ENDOSYMBIOSIS THEORY. "Although the endosymbiotic origin of eukaryotic plastids and mitochondrial organelles is now beyond serious question, the actual process by which bacteria transformed into highly integrated and derived organelles remains contentious. New work in aphids shows that a nuclear-encoded protein resulting from a horizontal gene transfer is targeted to a bacterial symbiont, further blurring the distinction between organelle and symbiont.” https://lnkd.in/d9nk9wh View in LinkedIn

IDEAS TOO RADICAL. "Throughout her career, Margulis’ work could arouse intense objection (one grant application elicited the response, "Your research is crap, do not bother to apply again"), and her formative paper, "On the Origin of Mitosing Cells," appeared in 1967 after being rejected by about fifteen journals." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis View in LinkedIn

ENDOSYMBIOSIS THEORY "Still a junior faculty at Boston University at the time, her theory that cell organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts were once independent bacteria was largely ignored for another decade, becoming widely accepted only after it was powerfully substantiated through genetic evidence." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis View in LinkedIn

CURRENT DOGMA. "The modern emphasis on endosymbiotic explanations for numerous eukaryotic features, including the cell itself (the so-called chimeric hypotheses), can be seen not only as resulting from the advent of molecular and genomic data, but also from the intellectual acceptance of the endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria and plastids." https://lnkd.in/dP2c_bU View in LinkedIn

WILLIAMSON HYPOTHESIS. "Williamson developed a controversial hypothesis proposing the acquisition of larval stages in some marine organisms by hybridisation between two distant animal species (a speciation process referred to as hybridogenesis by Williamson). The fraction of the genome of one of the contributor species would be restricted to lead the developmental program of a newly acquired larva whereas the genome of the other contributor would drive the development of most of the adult anatomical structures." https://lnkd.in/d_TVjhq View in LinkedIn