Lynn Margulis

Melissa Lyons
Period#2

9/13/09

Lynn Margulis was the oldest of four daughters, she was born in Chicago
on March 5, 1938. Morris Alexander is her father, who was a lawyer who
owned a company that made and sold a material used to mark streets and
highways. Leone was her mother who operated a travel agency. When
Margulis was fifteen, she finished her second year at Hyde Park High School
and was accepted into an early entrant program at the University of Chicago.
She received her Ph.D. in 1963 from UC Berkeley.
She wrote a hypothetical paper entitled The Origin of Mitosing Eukaryotic
Cells. The paper however was rejected by about fifteen scientific journals. It
was finally accepted by The Journal of Theoretical Biology and is
considered today a landmark in modern endosymbiotic theory. Even though
it comes from symbiosis ideas first put up by mid-19th century scientists and
by Merezhkovsky and Wallin in the early-20th century, Margulis's
endosymbiotic theory formulation is the first to rely on direct
microbiological observations. The paper was at first seriously rejected, as
symbiosis theories had been dismissed by mainstream biology at the time,
weathering constant disapproval of her ideas for decades. She is famous for
her persistence in pushing her theory forward, even with the conflict she
faced at the time.
Her most important scientific contribution is the endosymbiotic theory of the
origin of mitochondria as separate organisms that long ago begin a united
relationship with eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis.
The endosymbiotic theory applies to the origins of mitochondria and
chloroplasts, which are organelles of eukaryotic cells. It says these
originated as prokaryotic endosymbionts, which started to live inside
eukaryotic cells. The theory guesses that the mitochondria evolved from
aerobic bacteria, and that the chloroplast evolved from endosymbiotic
cyanobacteria. The evidence for this theory is convincing, and it is now
generally accepted.

http://www.isepp.org/Pages/San%20Jose%2004-05/MargulisSaganSJ.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis
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