This week, we learned about Endosymbiosis.
This topic is something new to me and it really changed my view on cells. The idea of endosymbiosis is that some organelles within cells were at one time free living cells themselves. Lynn Margulis provided evidences for this.
The two important organelles are mitochondria and chloroplast. They were engulfed by ancestral prokaryote and ended up becoming heterotrophic eukaryote and photosynthetic prokaryote respectively. Surprisingly, there were many evidences that support this idea.
For this topic, I didn't really understand it at first when we were required to answer the prepared questions before class. We had to describe the characteristics of mitochondria and chloroplast that have led scientists to propose the endosymbiotic theory. In class, I finally understood when Dr Parames explained that those organelles were eaten by larger cells and they become a part of the host cell although I'm still not sure how that can happen. I would love to study more about this.
p.s : We had our Test 1 on Thursday.