Lynn Margulis
(1938-2011)
Lynn Margulis was an American evolutionary biologist. Margulis transformed and fundamentally framed current understanding of the evolution of cells with nuclei by proposing it to have been the result of symbiotic mergers of bacteria. She was thus the primary modern proponent for the significance of endosymbiosis in evolution. Margulis was the co-developer of the
Gaia hypothesis with the British chemist
James Lovelock, proposing that the Earth functions as a single self-regulating system.
The hypothesis proposes that living and non-living parts of the Earth form a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism. Lovelock named it after the Greek goddess Gaia at the suggestion of novelist William Golding. The hypothesis also postulates that the biosphere has a regulatory effect on the Earth's environment that acts to sustain life.
Margulis transformed and fundamentally framed current understanding of the evolution of cells with nuclei by proposing it to have been the result of symbiotic mergers of bacteria (prokaryotes. 3.5 million years ago) with later eukaryotes (2.7 million years ago). Where standard Darwinian evolution holds that evolution proceeds because of random mutations of DNA, Margulis identified evolution by combination of existing species.
Before the discovery of
archea by
Carl Woese and
George Fox
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