Lynn Margulis, 1938–2011

For example, did you know that sex evolved from cannibalism among single-celled organisms? Quote from p.139:

"Microscopists sometimes witness microbial wrangling in which a hungry cell engulfs a neighbor. But the cells do not always digest what they engulf."

"Harvard University biologist Lemuel Roscoe Cleveland saw cannibalized protists live on the half-devoured. The protists he studied, covered by 9(2)+2 undulipodia, are called hypermastigotes. Normal hypermastigotes, which contain only a single set of chromosomes, live in the swollen hindguts of wood-eating termites and cockroaches. Cleaveland saw the hypermastigotes engulf one another. He noted that once they did, their membranes merged to make them into doubled cells. Most of the doubles died. But Cleaveland also saw that some of these doubled beings reproduced. Although sloppily, a doubled microbial monster would undergo cell division and give rise to another doubled microbial monster."

"Cleaveland saw how thwarted cannibalism could have led to the first set of of doubled chromosomes. Moreover, abnormal cell divisions--a precursor to the meiosis that takes place in our own cells--could restore the merged would-be cannibals to their original single set of chromosomes."

...

"Once upon a time, we think, eating and mating were the same. Terminal microbial indigestion may seem rather unromantic as the source of the human sex drive. But Cleveland's picture of hungry, serendipitously mating hypermastigotes presents a mix of comedy and terror appropriate for the origin of sex."

"It’s as if you wrote a four-volume tome supposedly on world history but beginning in the year 1800 at Fort Dearborn and the founding of Chicago."

Worth reading the rest.

But death means never getting a chance to have a conversation with her. I am so sad to see her go.

Seems to me that the biological reality is that bacteria rule the Earth. They always have and always will, before we were here and after we're gone. And it seems at present there is _relatively_ little biotech we can do without the help of bacteria and their amazing junk-free genome. But I could be wrong. Corrections from the experts are welcome.