Symbiogenesis, History of

Abstract

Symbiogenesis is an evolutionary mechanism caused by hereditary symbiosis. Symbiogenesis theories were introduced in early twentieth-century Russia, when Merezhkowsky, Faminstyn, and Kozo-Polyansky recognized that organellar structures present in the eukaryotic cell evolved through symbiogenesis. Symbiogenesis research subsequently spread to Europe and the Americas through the works of von Faber, Portier, Buchner, Schneider, Wallin, and Lederberg. Nonetheless, symbiogenesis theories were excluded from the Modern Synthesis that advanced a selectionist account of evolution, and were only reintroduced by Margulis, from the 1960s onward. Her Serial Endosymbiotic Theory gives a synthetic account of how symbiogenesis underlies the origin of the four eukaryotic kingdoms. Today, symbiogenesis research associates with research on lateral gene transfer, mobile genetic elements, viriome and microbiome studies, and the Gaia Hypothesis, making symbiogenesis one of the candidates for an Extended Synthesis.