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FCG International Science and Research 2008: LYNN MARGULIS

This decision was made “because of her pioneering research work in the field of biology and evolution through the study of certain bacteria. Among the numerous contributions made by Lynn Margulis we can highlight the formulation of innovative theories, such as symbiogenesis, that explain the evolutionary origin of the cells belonging to complex organisms. From the outset, Professor Margulis has supported Lovelock’s “Gaia” concept, contributing to it from the field of biology and enabling it to become considered as a scientific theory.

“Her work is an example of constancy and persistence in the world of science since she needed fifteen years of attempts until she was able to publish her studies on eukaryotic cells in 1967. The Jury has also valued the educational ability of this researcher who has undertaken scientific collaboration projects with several Spanish universities.  Margulis has received an honorary doctorate degree from numerous universities in our country and, in 1999, she was awarded the National Medal of Science by the United States Government.” According to the jury that met in Valladolid on June 23, 2008, chaired by: Mr. Julio Fermoso García, Professor of Medicine at the University of Salamanca and President of Caja Duero Savings Bank, and made up by the following members: Mr. Alberto Aguirre de Cárcer, Deputy Director of Information at ABC Newspaper; Mr. José Ballesta Germán, Professor of Medicine at the University of Murcia and Minister for Public Works, Housing and Transport of the Government of the Region of Murcia (Spain); Mr. Luis Jaramillo Guerreira, Director of COPE Radio Castilla y León; Dr. Regina Revilla Pedreira, Director of External Relations and Communication at Merck, Sharp & Dohme.

LYNN MARGULIS - Biography

Lynn Margulis, USA (University of Massachusetts) Doctor in Genetics from the University of California at Berkeley, 1965; Profesor of Biology at the University of Boston, 1966;  she is currently Profesor at the Departament of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts (MA). Known for her work on the origin of cells, she has been a member of the North American Science Academy since 1983, of the Russian Acadmey of Natural Sciences since 1997, of the America Academy of the Arts and Sciences since 1998 and a member of the NASA Workshop on Global Habitability, 1982. Since 1971 she has been acknowledged for her contribution to James E. Lovelock’s Gaia concept. Among her books we can highlight Symbiosis in Cell Evolution, Symbiotic Planet and Five Kingdoms (with W. Schwartz). Along with Dorion Sagan she is the co-author of: Origins of Sex, Mystery Dance, What is Life?, What is Sex? And Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution. She has made several films on living organisms as well as didactic materials for teaching scuience to young people.  She has received an honorary doctorate award from the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid, among others. She has received the United Nations National Medal of Science in 1999 for her Serial Endosymbiosis Theory.

Lynn Margulis started her secondary studies at Hyde Park Public High School and when her parents changed her to the elitist Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, she returned to her previous school with her old friends, where she thought she belonged. From that time, she fondly recalls her Spanish teacher (Mrs. Kniazza).

At the age of 16 she was accepted to participate in the programme of skilful students at the University of Chicago from which she graduated at the age of 20, with –as she says- a certificate, a husband (Carl Sagan) and a an even harder critical scepticism. Margulis, speaking of her time at the University of Chicago (and particularly of her Natural Science II Class): “There science facilitated the query of profound questions where philosophy and science must merge: What are we? Of what are we and the universe made? Where do we come from? How do we work?" I have no doubt that the I owe the choice of a scientific degree to the geniality of this “idiosyncratic” education. (Symbiotic Planet. Basic Books, New York, 1998)

In 1958, she continued her training at the University of Wisconsin as a student of a Masters Degree while simultaneously working as an Assistant Professor.  She studied cellular biology and genetics (general genetics and population genetics). Of her professor GG and GPP James F. Crow she said: “He changed my life. When I left the University of Chicago I knew that I wanted to study genetics but after attending Crow’s classes, I knew that I only wanted to study genetics”

From the outset she was attracted to the World of bacteria, then only considered in the dimension of germs of a pathogenic type, without any interest in the evolutionary sphere. Margulis researched in ignored and forgotten Works to support her first intuition on the importance of the microbacteria world in evolution.  In her various projects, she guides us herself through her research and the movements prior to her contributions.  She has always shown a special willingness to value those previous movements, from her memory of Mrs. Kniazza, her high school Spanish teacher, to her University professors and what they meant to her, ending with an extensive reference to those scientific works that she had rescued from the forgotten to support her evolutionary thinking.

She was interested in the works of Ruth Sager, Francis Ryan and Gino Pontecorvo. These writings brought her to what she considered a masterpiece: The Cell in Developement and Heredity, written by E. B Wilson in 1928. All those brought her closer to the work of L. E. Wallin, Konstantin S. Merezhkovsky and A. S. Famintsyn in which the hypothesis that the parts of Eukaryotic Cells outside the nucleus were evolutionary forms of other free life bacteria. Since then her work centered on developing that hypothesis that led her to formulate her theory on Serial Endosymbiosis and her vision of evolution in the broadest theory of symbiogenesis.

She has made multiple contributions to biology and evolution: she has discovered of the evolutionary potential and the importance of the microbacteria world; she has correctly described step by step the origin of Eukaryotic Cells (SET, which is considered her best work); along with K. V. Schwartz she has classified life on Earth into five grouped kingdoms on two great levels: bacteria and eukaryots; she has formulated her theory on symbiogenesis and the importance of it in evolution; from the outset she has supported James E. Lovelock’s Gaia concept, contributing to it from the field of biology and working in order for it to be considered in the category of a theory; she has undertaken a collection of specific works on bacteria organisms and symbiotic life forms... She is currently working on the possible origin of spirochaetes ciliates.

The Bacteria World

Before Margulis work, evolutionism centered on the study of animals and plants, they were considered actors of innovations that had led to the current levels of complexity and specialization. Margulis indicated that bacteria, until then only considered of interest to bacteriological medicine, was in fact the artifice of that complexity and the current state of different organisms. Against the vision of animals and plants, and in general all multicell creatures, as individual beings she proposed the vision of self-organised cellular communities, giving those cells the maximum evolutionary potential.

Serial Endosymbiosis Theory (SET)

Following fifteen failed attempts to publish her work on the origin of eukaryotic cells, in 1966 she managed to get the Journal of Theoretical Biology to accept and finally publish, at the end of  1967, her article entitled «Origin of Mitosing Cells» (thanks to, as she herself has pointed out, the special interest of its then Editor, James F. DaNelly). It was Max Taylor, professor at University of British Columbia, specialising in protists, who baptised it with the abbreviation SET (Serial Endosyrnbiosis Theory).

Margulis continued to work on her theory of the origin of eukaryotic cells and what was initially an article became a book. Again she failed in her attempts to have it published (what was then her publishing company, Academia Press, having retained the manuscript for five months, sent her a letter saying it had been rejected without giving her and further explanation). Following over a year of perseverance, the book was published by Yale University Press. Since then, SET has slowly made its way in the scientific world and today it is considered proven in three quarters of its contents.

Symbiogenesis

Margulis, who is characterized by searching for and evaluating the work of her predecessors, instead of diluting these by creating new terms, she has always tried to use the terms coined by previous authors. This is the case of the term symbiogenesis (Konstantin Merezhkovsky, 1855-1921), a term which was rescued by her and with which she defines the central nucleus of her contribution to evolutionism.

Margulis considers that, in the same way that eukaryotic cells (the origin of protists, animals, fungi and plants) originate from symbiogenesis, most of the characteristics acquired by multicell beings are the result of symbiotic incorporation of, mainly, free-life bacteria. She reduces the importance of random mutations postulated by neo-darwinism considering them merely incidental and offers a new vision on evolution by incorporation.  Organisms tend to organise themselves in consortia: “ ‘Independent’ life tends to join together and re-emerge as a new whole on a superior and broader level of organisation.”  With this theory, Margulis opposes the individualist vision offered by neo-darwinism.