Abstract
The endosymbiotic origin of plastids from cyanobacterial endosymbionts is now generally accepted. Early formulations of this theory (Schimper, 1885; Mereschkowski, 1905) were induced by the mere similarity in morphology, chlorophyll pigments and photosynthetic function between the photosynthetic organelles of autotrophic eukaryotes and their ancestors and extant relatives, then termed “blue-green algae”. This pioneering idea formulated in the absence of any data in comparative biochemistry became forgotten for many years and had to compete after its revival (Margulis, 1970) with hypotheses postulating an autogenous origin of the eukaryotic cell through intracellular compartmentalization and functional specialization (Cavalier-Smith, 1975; Uzzell and Spolsky, 1974). Now a wealth of conclusive biochemical data is available. These should be reviewed briefly before entering into the molecular data, were doubtless responsible for the breakthrough of the endosymbiotic theory in the 1980s.
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Löffelhardt, W. (1995). Molecular Analysis of Plastid Evolution. In: Joint, I. (eds) Molecular Ecology of Aquatic Microbes. NATO ASI Series, vol 38. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-79923-5_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-79923-5_15
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