3 ms·
What's more likely, it happens once in a billion years and we happened to catch the exact specimens doing it? Or it happens a lot more often and we happened to
by personjerry 3y ago
What's more likely, it happens once in a billion years and we happened to catch the exact specimens doing it? Or it happens a lot more often and we happened to catch an instance of it, but it's usually not as impactful or memorable as the mentioned instances?
Terrible sensationalist reporting.
- qup 3y ago> Altogether, the team says this indicates UCYN-A is a full organelle, which is given the name of nitroplast. It appears that this began to evolve around 100 million years ago, which sounds like an incredibly long time but is a blink of an eye compared to mitochondria and chloroplasts. It happened 100 million year ago, not in the petri dish at the lab.
- colechristensen 3y agoIt really has only happened a few times in the history of life, at least only a few times that survived. The title could use a little work though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mkl 3y agoThis particular instance started 100 million years ago, so it's not a right-place-right-moment situation. There are only two known instances of symbiogenesis occurring, mitochondria and plastids (which includes chloroplasts), which justifies the once in a billion years description. Other instances are suspected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis There are lots of known endosymbionts, separate organisms living inside the body or cells of another, a prerequisite for symbiogenesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiont