Endosymbiosis: double-take on plastid origins.
Plastids--the light-harvesting machines of plant and algal cells--evolved from cyanobacteria inside a eukaryotic host more than a billion years ago. New data reveal that a mysterious unicellular alga acquired its photosynthetic apparatus much more recently than other eukaryotes, affording a second look at the primary endosymbiotic origin of plastids.
Archibald
John M
JM
The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Program in Evolutionary Biology, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University, Sir Charles Tupper Medical Building, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 1X5, Canada. jmarchib@dal.ca
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D000458:Cyanobacteria; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000235:genetics*; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D010788:Photosynthesis / Q000235:genetics; D018087:Plastids / Q000235:genetics*; D013559:Symbiosis / Q000235:genetics*