Keeling, Patrick J., John P. McCutcheon, and W. Ford Doolittle. “Symbiosis becoming permanent: Survival of the luckiest.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 33 (2015): 10101-10103.
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Some might think we already know enough about endosymbiosis and organelle origins, and that speakers at the colloquium Symbioses becoming permanent: The origins and evolutionary trajectories of organelles would have little new to say. Indeed, since the 1980s, the idea that the mitochondria and plastids (chloroplasts) of eukaryotic cells arose through endosymbiosis has been about as universally accepted as such things ever are (1). However, enormous gaps remain in our knowledge about just how this happened. These gaps may, in part, be bridged by comparing organelles to other diverse endosymbiotic systems. Decades of rapid progress in both endosymbiont and organelle biology has revealed much about their respective natures, but has also allowed the fields to drift apart. It therefore seemed to us that a conceptual reunification was in order. Here we review some of the similarities and differences between endosymbiotic systems that have been uncovered in recent years, and reflect on how these advances change our view of the evolution of endosymbiotic partnerships.