Jonathan Badger wrote:
>====some stuff deleted=====
> clearly at the very least
> protists with mitrochrondia and those without arose from a different
> evolutionary event.
Ooooooh, careful. Not to get pedantic, but there are protists that have
almost certainly secondarily lost their mitochondria (or mitochondrion
endosymbiont, perhaps, to be more correct). So, possesion of a
mitochondrion is not a true synapomorphy (in fact some yeast species
don't have mitochondria either).
As a slight digression, I met Lynn Margulis last month at a conference
where she gave a keynote address. She informed us about the five
kingdom classification scheme. A funny thing she said to me (after I
gave my little talk and announced that there were, in fact, Three
Domains) was, 'Why are you giving precedence to the nuclear-enclosed
genome, over and above the mitochondrion-enclosed genome. Eukaryotes
can in fact be considered to be a particular lineage of bacteria [the
Alpha-proteobacteria].'
I'm still not sure whether or not she is serious.
james
