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BIOLOGICAL UNIQUENESS. "Eukaryotic cells undoubtedly exhibit many of the hallmark features of biological individuality, including spatiotemporal boundedness, indivisibility, and the integration, cooperation, and interdependence of parts." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

TRANSITIONS. "First, the parts of a new whole may retain some independence with respect to their ability to reproduce. Second, interdependence of parts is emphasized as a threshold that must be crossed for a new type of individual to have truly evolved. Both are what we see in the case of the eukaryotic cell." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

KIN VERSUS FOREIGN. "It is uncontroversial that eukaryogenesis involved the fusion of two taxonomically distinct units to form a new type of cell. Eukaryogenesis can thus be distinguished from evolutionary transitions based on the integration of closely related units (as in the evolution of multicellularity)." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

NO SINGLE EVENT. "Margulis, a champion of endosymbiotic theory, argued for the community perspective on the eukaryotic condition. Symbiotic mergers similar to eukaryogenesis, she insisted, are ubiquitous in the history of life. As a result, our understanding of evolutionary processes requires the radical revision, perhaps abandonment, of many traditional neo-Darwinian ideas." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

MESSY HYBRID. "Is the eukaryotic cell best seen as a kind of community composed of two or three taxonomically divergent entities or as a genuine individual that can be part of an evolving population of similar things? Should the answer have an impact on biological theory?" http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

EXPECT THE IMPROBABLE. "However, combinatorial improbability is how evolution works: that eukaryotes arose is not unique in its uniqueness." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

LAUGHINGLY IMPROBABLE. "The combinatorial stringing together of all of the steps between LECA and Macropus rufus (the red kangaroo), Trichomonas vaginalis, or Mozart is, indeed, laughably improbable. Surely, if life’s tape was rewound, none of these would recur." (LECA = ). http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

RIDDLES OF FORM "The waves of the sea, the little ripples on the shore, the sweeping curve of the sandy bay between the headlands, the outline of the hills, the shape of the clouds, all these are so many riddles of form." (D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson 1986-1948). https://lnkd.in/daEGKJJ View in LinkedIn

MESSY BOLT-ONS. "A patchy prokaryotic distribution of preeukaryotic features is what advocates of rampant LGT as a crucial evolutionary process should expect." (LGT = Lateral gene transfer). http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE this next two weekends continues with the topic of spider web geometry, structure and function. That such small creatures can be so smart has been confounding, until the recent finding that in some small spiders, their central nervous system actually occupies ~80% of their body cavity and a quarter of their keg cavities, in contrast to other insects. https://lnkd.in/dDxNxEX View in LinkedIn