Eukaryote

Eukaryotes (/juːˈkærioʊt, -ət/) are organisms whose cells have a nucleus enclosed within membranes, unlike prokaryotes (Bacteria and Archaea), which have no membrane-bound organelles. Eukaryotes belong to the domain Eukaryota or Eukarya. Their name comes from the Greek εὖ (eu, 'well' or 'true') and κάρυον (karyon, 'nut' or 'kernel'). Eukaryotic cells also contain other membrane-bound organelles such as mitochondria and the Golgi apparatus, and in addition, some cells of plants and algae contain chloroplasts. Unlike unicellular archaea and bacteria, eukaryotes may also be multicellular and include organisms consisting of many cell types forming different kinds of tissue. Animals and plants are the most familiar eukaryotes. Eukaryotes can reproduce both asexually through mitosis and sexually through meiosis and gamete fusion. In mitosis, one cell divides to produce two genetically identical cells. In meiosis, DNA replication is followed by two rounds of cell division to produce four haploid daughter cells. These act as sex cells (gametes). Each gamete has just one set of chromosomes, each a unique mix of the corresponding pair of parental chromosomes resulting from genetic recombination during meiosis. The domain Eukaryota appears to be monophyletic, and makes up one of the domains of life in the three-domain system. The two other domains, Bacteria and Archaea, are prokaryotes and have none of the above features. Eukaryotes represent a tiny minority of all living things. However, due to their generally much larger size, their collective worldwide biomass is estimated to be about equal to that of prokaryotes. Eukaryotes evolved approximately 1.6–2.1 billion years ago, during the Proterozoic eon. The concept of the eukaryote has been attributed to the French biologist Edouard Chatton (1883–1947). The terms prokaryote and eukaryote were more definitively reintroduced by the Canadian microbiologist Roger Stanier and the Dutch-American microbiologist C. B. van Niel in 1962. In his 1937 work Titres et Travaux Scientifiques, Chatton had proposed the two terms, calling the bacteria prokaryotes and organisms with nuclei in their cells eukaryotes. However he mentioned this in only one paragraph, and the idea was effectively ignored until Chatton's statement was rediscovered by Stanier and van Niel. In 1905 and 1910, the Russian biologist Konstantin Mereschkowski (1855–1921) argued that plastids were reduced cyanobacteria in a symbiosis with a non-photosynthetic (heterotrophic) host that was itself formed by symbiosis between an amoeba-like host and a bacterium-like cell that formed the nucleus. Plants had thus inherited photosynthesis from cyanobacteria. In 1967, Lynn Margulis provided microbiological evidence for endosymbiosis as the origin of chloroplasts and mitochondria in eukaryotic cells in her paper, On the origin of mitosing cells. In the 1970s, Carl Woese explored microbial phylogenetics, studying variations in 16S ribosomal RNA. This helped to uncover the origin of the eukaryotes and the symbiogenesis of two important eukaryote organelles, mitochondria and chloroplasts. In 1977, Woese and George Fox introduced a 'third form of life', which they called the Archaebacteria; in 1990, Woese, Otto Kandler and Mark L. Wheelis renamed this the Archaea. In 1979, G. W. Gould and G. J. Dring suggested that the eukaryotic cell's nucleus came from the ability of Gram-positive bacteria to form endospores. In 1987 and later papers, Thomas Cavalier-Smith proposed instead that the membranes of the nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum first formed by infolding a prokaryote's plasma membrane. In the 1990s, several other biologists proposed endosymbiotic origins for the nucleus, effectively reviving Mereschkowski's theory.