Mr. Thomas just can’t seem to complete the chain of logic in his arguments. He tries to alter the statements of the researchers (note: the researchers did in fact do research and not sit in a room brain storming the ‘what ifs’) to say something completely different than their article clearly states. Thomas implies that that the authors assume that the component parts were static in an unchanging environment and suddenly, magically assembled into mitochondria. That is absolutely not what was said. The researcher identified equivalent function in a very primitive archaebacteria. The components present are functionally the same in energy transport as eukaryotic mitochondria. They state that uptake of archaebacteria and assimilation of their component function would result in an internalization of a membrane function. This is hardly a revelation. The idea of biomass assimilation as a catalyst to subsequent alterations in form and function have been around for decades. Nice to see that they’ve finally modeled this in a properly controlled study.
Ultimately, Mr. Thomas once again has drawn conclusion from an incomplete or misunderstood reading of the source material. At least this time he did not cite himself as a source - although he did double source 1 and 2 (another no no.).
The study authors are:
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aDepartment of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Monash University, Clayton 3800, Australia;
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bDepartments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and
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fMicrobiology and Immunology and
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cBio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010 Australia;
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dDepartment of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520; and
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eHoward Hughes Medical Institute, New Haven, CT 06520