The Origin of the Nucleus

Posted 3 March 2006 by

One of the new ScienceBloggers, Alex Palazzo, has an article about the origin of the nucleus on his blog, The Daily Transcript. Check it out!

3 Comments

wamba · 3 March 2006

The greatest divide in the living world exists between prokaryotes and eukaryotes (yes I know, there are viruses ... but lets not get off topic!).

Palazzo may be interested to learn that some people are proposing viruses as a key actor in the prokaryote -> eukaryote transition, as well as the RNA world -> DNA world transition. The two ages of the RNA world, and the transition to the DNA world: a story of viruses and cells Patrick Forterre, 2005 Biochimie 87, 793-803.

A Palazzo · 4 March 2006

Re: Viruses. Yes I've actually heard about these proposals. But it's like discussing Pluto, is it a planet? Are viruses alive? It depends on the definition. And I agree, viruses probably have a big part to play and probably are full of surprises (such as mimivirus http://ribonucleicacids.blogspot.com/2006/02/mimivirus.html )

Bruce Thompson GQ · 6 March 2006

"Let the quotemining begin!"
Posted by: Jim Wynne | March 4, 2006 10:02 AM
At The Daily Transcript

Well, Dave Scott has fired the first salvo. Apalazzos' writing in a style suited to the layman drew some complaints and corrections from other biologists. DS of course capitalizes on these and dismisses the whole article. Apalazzo presents the arguments as a "hypothesis" and DS says "I can envision no way to test or falsify this nuclear evolution narrative." Of course this hypothesis leads to specific predictions. Apalazzo summarizes "and thus the nucleus arose AFTER mitos arrived." Well there should be some bacteria, we have not seen, with mitochondria like organelle. Although a simplistic predication and does not address cellular trafficking it does go beyond the ID approach which consists of observation --- brick wall - co-opt evolutionary arguments - brick wall - supernatural argument.

Delta Pi Gamma (Scientia et Fermentum)