CELL EVOLUTION AND ORGANELLE ORIGINS - METASCIENCE TO SCIENCE

Numerous concepts and competing interests have always confronted and pushed studies of symbiosis and cell evolution to the margins of science. They include emphasis on the disease-causing nature of microbes, and on conflict and competition between species; nucleocentric views of heredity, and gene-centred views of evolution. The synthetic and interdisciplinary nature of studies of symbiosis and cell evolution defied ever-increasing specialization in the life sciences such that biologists were often unwilling to assess them. The study of organelle origins also struggled under the weight of its speculative nature. Only in recent years have some of these difficulties been over-come.