Cellular Symbiosis With Mitochondria

[maddog]

I am curious as to when and why Mitochondria formed a cellular relationship with cellular life. Or at least it is thought this was the case (I heard this from a Biology grad student years ago, when I was attending).

 

I understand symbiosis when both parties benefit from an action reinforces this action. I am just curious if anyone has figured this one out by now.

 

maddog

[Moontanman]

Pretty good places to start.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiotic_theory

 

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bioslabs/studies/mitochondria/mitorigin.html

[maddog]

Pretty good places to start.

 

http://en.wikipedia....ymbiotic_theory

http://www.ruf.rice..../mitorigin.html

Thanx Moontanman for the links, I read through them and enjoyed the info. What prompted this question was a thread on "curing cancer" that described a pathway of getting energy when either Mitochondria aren't readily available or properly functioning. This method was stated to be less efficient at producing energy, If this were so, this would be a motivation for the original symbiosis. So that begs the question: In which way did the Mitochondria (or whatever it ancestor that started the process) benefit? I suppose survivability might have been enhanced, since whatever was chasing down the Mitochondria would now have to deal with a bigger cell.

 

As you can see, Biology was not my major, though I got an A in the only course I took in Biology while in college, it was a simple freshman class that overall was quite boring. The only part that interested me was genetics, evolution, cell structure and function. All three subjects were covered in the course in less than four weeks (survey class). My interest in the three subjects has remained throughout my life.

 

maddog