Origin of Eukaryotic Cells [Hardcover]

Lynn Margulis (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 371 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (February 25, 1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300013531
• ISBN-13: 978-0300013535
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,884,089 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lynn Margulis, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, received the 1999 National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton. She has been a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences since 1983 and of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences since 1997. Author, editor, or coauthor of chapters in more than forty books, she has published or been profiled in many journals, magazines, and books, among them Natural History, Science, Nature, New England Watershed, Scientific American, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science Firsts, and The Scientific 100. She has made numerous contributions to the primary scientific literature of microbial evolution and cell biology.

Margulis's theory of species evolution by symbiogenesis, put forth in Acquiring Genomes (co-authored with Dorion Sagan, 2002), describes how speciation does not occur by random mutation alone but rather by symbiotic d©tente. Behavioral, chemical, and other interactions often lead to integration among organisms, members of different taxa. In well-documented cases some mergers create new species. Intimacy, physical contact of strangers, becomes part of the engine of life's evolution that accelerates the process of change. Margulis works in the laboratory and field with many other scientists and students to show how specific ancient partnerships, in a given order over a billion years, generated the cells of the species we see with our unaided eyes.The fossil record, in fact, does not show Darwin's predicted gradual changes between closely related species but rather the "punctuated equilibrium" pattern described by Eldredge and Gould: a jump from one to a different species.

She has worked on the "revolution in evolution" since she was a graduate student. Over the past fifteen years, Margulis has cowritten several books with Dorion Sagan, among them What is Sex? (1997), What is Life? (1995), Mystery Dance: On the Evolution of Human Sexuality (1991), Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors (1986), and Origins of Sex:Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination (1986).

Her work with K.V. Schwartz provides a consistent formal classification of all life on Earth and has lead to the third edition of Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth (1998). Their classification scheme was generated from scientific results of myriad colleagues and its logical-genealogical basis is summarized in her single-authored book Symbiosis in Cell Evolution: Microbial Communities in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons (second edition, 1993). The bacterial origins of both chloroplasts and mitochondria are now well established. Currently, with colleagues and students, she explores the possible origin of cilia from spirochetes.

Since the mid-1970s, Margulis has aided James E. Lovelock, FRS, in documenting his Gaia Theory, which posits that the Earth's surface interactions among living beings, rocks and soil, air and water have created a vast, self-regulating system. From the vantage of outer space the Earth looks like an amazing being; from the vantage of biochemistry it behaves in many ways like a giant organism.

Photo by Luis Rico

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Changed My Life, September 22, 2002

By 

S. G. Markov (Rochester, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Origin of Eukaryotic Cells (Hardcover)

I believe that this book will one day be a collector's item because it first seriously advanced the idea that symbiosis is a primary mechanism of evolution.

For a reason I can't recall, I was hurrying through the stacks of the U. of Rochester Medical School Library in the very early 1970's. The title on the spine of one book happened to catch my eye, The Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. I didn't know what eukaryotic cells were. Impulsively, I took the book out and read a bit of it while standing in the stacks. Then I decided to check it out of the library. Over the next two weeks I read the whole book very carefully. I had very little scientific background, but I did remember that when I took freshman biology in 1953-54 at the U. of R. I thought that it looked to me as if parts of more complex single-celled microbes were, in fact, simpler microbes that had somehow gotten inside the more complex cells and stayed there.

This book confirmed that idea, and it changed my life because it renewed my interest in evolution. I began reading a great deal about it. I still read a lot about evolution. I've just finished reading Lynn Margulis' most recent book, Acquiring Genomes, written with Dorion Sagan, also more than just a good read. Both books advance the concept of symbiosis as a major cause of evolutionary change. They specify, by giving the details, one very important way, perhaps the most important way, in which evolution can occur in leaps and bounds rather than soley by the long-term acquisition of genetic mutations.

Anyone with a deep interest in evolution ought to read The Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. And perhaps they should buy up extant copies of it to pass on to their descendants as an investment.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful ideas in a tough package, October 16, 2010

By 

Ted Anderson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Origin of Eukaryotic Cells (Hardcover)

I have long wanted to read the original work on the symbiotic theory of
eukaryotic cells. When I finally found this book I read it eagerly and
was not disappointed. It is full if interesting ideas, described with
lots of background and copious supporting evidence. The book was very
well-organized and for the most part very clearly argued. I found the
background on cellular evolution and the origin of life interesting,
though mostly for historical reasons. It was fascinating to see the
reasoning about lineages of organisms in the time before DNA sequencing
was possible. As deeply technical at is was, it was really fun and
engaging to read.

My background is in physics and computers and most of what I know about
microbiology I learned reading books like Paul Davies' "The Fifth
Miracle". I came to this book knowing the difference between mitosis
and meiosis, but was still completely floored by the vocabulary, or
really the nearly impenetrable jargon. That didn't badly put me off,
however, I just put on my hip waders and treated it as a large set of
puzzles. How long would it take me to figure out, for example, what an
"obligate aerobe" was or the meaning of the related "microaerophilic"?
I find Neal Stephenson's books bracing for the same reason (though to a
much smaller degree). In Margulis' defense, I suspect that furiously
slinging jargon was part of the admission ticket to get this hypothesis
taken seriously by the old boys club, which cytology surely was back in
1970. I can see that for a 32 year old woman proposing a radical
revision of cellular evolution in 1970, showing the slightest weakness
in this area might have been fatal to her ideas. Still, I can't help
thinking that even a few hundred extra words when introducing the most
obscure terminology would have greatly improved accessibility of this
work.

The proposal that symbiosis of flagellates lead to the development of
mitosis, however, was difficult for me to understand. Perhaps the gaps
in my vocabulary and my insufficient background in microbiology created
and perpetuated my confusion in this area. But it seemed like the
description was just unclear and incomplete. On the other hand, the
various stages in the proposed integration of the flagellar endosymbiont
(see?) into eukaryotic reproduction was used to good (and reasonably
clear) effect to rearrange the relationships among lower eukaryotes.

I rate the book as four stars instead of five, for the confusion with
flagellates and the lack of even a small amount of help with the
vocabulary. But if you don't mind a challenge and like seeing how
powerful ideas are developed, you will not be disappointed.