Review of a Lynn Margulis book I am doing my best to wrap my head around
Lynn Margulis has been a maverick all her life. Early in her career she shocked her biological colleagues by arguing that the mitochondria that power our cells and the chloroplasts that let plants transform solar into chemical energy once were free-living bacteria. As soon as scientists could isolate and decode the scraps of DNA in those vital organelles, they found that she was right. Margulis went on to develop her Serial Endosymbiosis Theory, which attempted to trace the development of all creatures with nucleated cells, from yeasts to humans, to a series of genetic mergers between different kinds of organisms. According to Margulis, all the familiar family trees of life, which show only diverging branches, are wrong. Ancient roots and current branches cross and merge to produce new species. To Margulis, nature is far more promiscuous and much more creative than most biologists dream.Her new book, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species, extends and deepens that argument. Margulis sets out to prove that new species rarely if ever appear as the result of mutation, isolation, genetic drift, or population bottlenecks--the meat and potatoes of neo-Darwinism. Instead she maintains that the major engine of evolutionary change, the source of most of the new forms that natural selection edits, is symbiogenesis--the acquisition of whole genomes as the result of symbiotic associations between different kinds of organisms. (Knowing that some people will seize on her thesis as an attack on the theory of evolution as a whole, Margulis makes it clear that she fully supports Darwin's great discovery of the mechanism of natural selection. She simply thinks that neo-Darwinists have failed to recognize the enormous creative power of genomic mergers.)
Readers who are familiar with Margulis' earlier works will recognize her vivid, personal and sometimes impressionistic writing style. I found this book, co-authored by her son, Dorion Sagan, to be clear and accessible. Starting with Chapter 9, where Margulis presents her latest ideas on the symbiotic origin of the nucleus itself, things get a bit more technical. Margulis makes every effort to help readers through the thicket of important, but at times tongue-twisting terms, and supplements explanations in the text with an excellent glossary. Margulis also presents the findings of several other researchers whose work supports or relates closely to her own.
Readers may or may not close the book convinced that Margulis is right and the neo-Darwinists are wrong. But they will come away with a vastly deeper understanding of the pervasive nature and power of the microbial world, and of symbiosis. Margulis reveals a hidden side of nature, in which microbes have generated most if not all of life's metabolic machinery, in which vastly different life-forms consort in a myriad of ways, and in which the acquisition of entire genomes provides the raw material for great evolutionary leaps. Anyone with a deep interest in biology will gain important insights from "Acquiring Genomes."
Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (Wiley & Sons, 2002).
Readers who are familiar with Margulis' earlier works will recognize her vivid, personal and sometimes impressionistic writing style. I found this book, co-authored by her son, Dorion Sagan, to be clear and accessible. Starting with Chapter 9, where Margulis presents her latest ideas on the symbiotic origin of the nucleus itself, things get a bit more technical. Margulis makes every effort to help readers through the thicket of important, but at times tongue-twisting terms, and supplements explanations in the text with an excellent glossary. Margulis also presents the findings of several other researchers whose work supports or relates closely to her own.
Readers may or may not close the book convinced that Margulis is right and the neo-Darwinists are wrong. But they will come away with a vastly deeper understanding of the pervasive nature and power of the microbial world, and of symbiosis. Margulis reveals a hidden side of nature, in which microbes have generated most if not all of life's metabolic machinery, in which vastly different life-forms consort in a myriad of ways, and in which the acquisition of entire genomes provides the raw material for great evolutionary leaps. Anyone with a deep interest in biology will gain important insights from "Acquiring Genomes."
Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (Wiley & Sons, 2002).