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For the first time in over a billion years, two lifeforms have merged to form a single organism through a process known as primary endosymbiosis. This rare occurrence has only been observed twice in Earth’s history, with the first event leading to the evolution of mitochondria and complex life forms. The second event resulted in the emergence of plants.
A recent study by an international team of scientists has shed new light on this evolutionary event between an ocean-dwelling algae species and a bacterium. This unique process, where the algae engulfed the bacterium to form an internal organelle, offers valuable insights into evolution and has the potential to revolutionize agriculture.
Tyler Coale, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, led one of the two studies that uncovered this phenomenon. He emphasized the significance of this event in the history of complex life on Earth and the potential for engineering similar organelles into crop plants to improve nitrogen fixation.
The research papers detailing these findings were published in two esteemed scientific journals: Science and Cell. The collaborative efforts of scientists from various institutions such as MIT, UC Santa Cruz, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and universities in Japan and Spain were instrumental in unraveling this groundbreaking discovery.