1. Why do plant and animal cells contain organelles that have their own DNA?
2. To what extent does that DNA resemble any other creature's DNA?

Concepts:

1. Some organisms live together, that is their genetic future depends on each other cooperating; they possess shared destinies.

• lichens
• coral polyps
• termites

2. Fusion the idea that some creatures, upon ingesting their neighbors or competitors retain some of the structures in their bodies as functional parts.

• jellyfish ingest cnidarians and retain stinging cysts (cells)
• nudibranchs ingest stinging cells and they remain active.

My life, personalizing the intellectual past.

Her family, son's question influenced the book.
pp. 2,3,4.
Her training, University of Chicago and CAL, Berkeley.
p. 13-21.
Her marriage, (1957) to Carl Sagan
p. 16.
Her educational maturity
pp. 13-24.
"evolutionists, even those long dead, exerted a spell over me from my first encounter with their work."
p. 24 .
"one must always strive to distinguish bullshit from authenticity."
p. 16.

KEY

Science and Philosophy

"There science facilitated the query of profound questions where philosophy and science must merge:

• What are we?
  
• Of what are we and the universe made?
  
• Where do we come from?
  
• How do we work?"
  

Building blocks of doubt, obstacles, or anomalies that gave rise to an opportunity for a radically different hypothesis about competitive evolution:

1. Ciliates, flagellum, or tails on plants and animals
2. kinetosomes (Centriole-kinetosomes and microtubules) calcium and the mitotic spindles
   
3. Cellular nucleus -- a membrane only in some organisms
   
4. Mutation -- alteration in the DNA affecting protein synthesis
   
5. Genes, found outside of the nucleus
6. Chromosomes, must have RNA in order to function as a code for proteins
7. Environment influences what proteins are manufactured and
8. Evolutionary history -- "Life is a series of selves --organisms or cells. " "metabolic information" acts as "a lens to peer into life's ancient history."

[on Morowitz' contributions to evolutionary biology]. in Margulis, p. 79.

The means or method of determining verity:

"distinguishing [lumpers vs. splitters]
Realization [analysis and synthesis]
experiments" [testing assumptions]

¶ 2&3, p. 23.

"The body of coherent science produced by the U.S. school of geneticists in the first half of the twentieth century gave me a sense of history of biological --especially genetical-- thought"

"From the beginning the need for chemical explanation was clear."
24.

"Evolution is simply all history."
"change through time...the convoluted history of which we are the living legacy"
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution." Theodosius Dobzhansky
p. 24.

"mysterious genes outside the nucleus."
p. 24.

"Experiments described by these authors showed that two kinds of organelles, membrane-bounded structures inside cells but outside the nucleus, plastids and mitochondria, had significantly affected heredity."
p. 25.

"It seemed obvious to me that there were double inheritance systems with cells inside cells."
25

"Library sleuthing," UCB (Cal)
p. 29.

Her contribution to evolutionary science is: SET
"The Origin of the Eukaryotic Cell"
p. 31-32

Diagram:

orgins ?

p. 30.

"Taxonomy is the science of identifying, naming, and classifying organisms....Taxonomies like maps, bring into relief selected distinguishing features."

(page 51.)

Taxonomy: compare this tree with her description on p. 129.

SET is a theory of coming together, of merging of cells of different (lineages) histories and abilities."

"Before serial endosymbiosis and the establishment of the aerobic nucleated cell, no cell fusion existed. Meiotic sex, like that of the egg fertilized by the sperm, came later. Serial endosymbiosis made our kind of fusion sex possible."

page 32.

More on symbiotic associations?