Evolution question.

[scruffy]

Here's another cool evolutionary tweak -mitochondria.

They are essentially enslaved purple bacteria, the best theory is they escaped into the cell from a broken phagosome, and then at some point they had some membrane proteins inserted into them, that allowed them to live symbiotically with(in) the cell.

The mitochondrion is a "symbiont", it generates and compartmentalizes energy for the cell, but it's its own life form, with its own DNA and its own reproductive cycle. So, inside every cell, there are actually multiple life forms, and one way you get "discontinuous jumps" in evolution is when two or more life forms interact during their reproductive cycles.

There are "good" viruses too, that are also symbionts. In fact, if you kill all the viruses the brain stops working, you can't remember anything anymore. (There is a "virus-like" mechanism in the brain that shares bits of RNA between neighboring cells).

A human "being" is actually an amalgam of human, bacterial, and viral life. Evolution has incorporated different kinds of life along the way, to do specific jobs. Energy management is one of them, information processing is another.

 

[zaangalewa]

Here's another cool evolutionary tweak -mitochondria.

They are essentially enslaved purple bacteria, the best theory is they escaped into the cell from a broken phagosome, and then at some point they had some membrane proteins inserted into them, that allowed them to live symbiotically with(in) the cell.

The mitochondrion is a "symbiont", it generates and compartmentalizes energy for the cell, but it's its own life form, with its own DNA and its own reproductive cycle. So, inside every cell, there are actually multiple life forms, and one way you get "discontinuous jumps" in evolution is when two or more life forms interact during their reproductive cycles.

There are "good" viruses too, that are also symbionts. In fact, if you kill all the viruses the brain stops working, you can't remember anything anymore. (There is a "virus-like" mechanism in the brain that shares bits of RNA between neighboring cells).

A human "being" is actually an amalgam of human, bacterial, and viral life. Evolution has incorporated different kinds of life along the way, to do specific jobs. Energy management is one of them, information processing is another.

Seems not to make a big sense what you say here. Reason: All cells of a body are descendents of the same single cell. 50% maternal + 50% paternal. This is so for the Chromosomes. The genetics of the mitochondria is an exception because it exists outside of the chromosomes in the egg cell - so the mtDNA (DNA of the mitochondria) is always only maternal. And asides of this start to live after our birth in our body many other microorganisms which are not from our body. The number of bacteriae which live in our body is as high as the number of our normal body cells I heard. But bacteriae are much more little. And virusses are even much more little than bacteriae. And many bacteriae and virusses are useful or even necessary for our health. Question: Did you ever hear that fungi also live in our body?