Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An organism living inside another organism in an endosymbiotic relationship.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun ecology An organism that lives within the body or cells of another organism.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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I'm perfectly happy to call the endosymbiont theory a "theory" even though it's not established fact, as you say.
A critique on the endosymbiotic theory for the origin of mitochondria 2007
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For that they have to rely on a bacterial endosymbiont.
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PALCA: So a louse with a healthy endosymbiont and access to your blood is a happy louse.
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And before you can say can I have a definition, please, an endosymbiont is an organism that lives inside another organism and helps it out.
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Dr. PITTENDRIGH: So in the absence of this endosymbiont, the body louse does not get the vitamins it needs to survive.
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Don't see how you retrogradely fit preplastids onto plastids without corrupting the function of the endosymbiont chloroplast.
A critique on the endosymbiotic theory for the origin of mitochondria 2007
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Reavmo, one of the indications that there is no theory is that there are many different scenarios, and that we do not know the host or the endosymbiont.
A critique on the endosymbiotic theory for the origin of mitochondria 2007
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Anaerobic cells normally do not survive in environment that contains oxygen, while the endosymbiont would need oxygen in order to present fitness advantage.
A critique on the endosymbiotic theory for the origin of mitochondria 2007
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I'm saying there are reasonable objections to Albert's problems with the endosymbiont theory for the origin of mitochondria.
A critique on the endosymbiotic theory for the origin of mitochondria 2007
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So it is not that you can not find a sequence of events that would lead from a bacterial endosymbiont to a reticular mitochondrion, no you cannot find such a scenario that makes sense in terms of survival.
A critique on the endosymbiotic theory for the origin of mitochondria 2007
john commented on the word endosymbiont
An organism that lives within the body or cells of another organism. Mitochondrion are thought to be descended from ancient bacteria, and as such the result of endosymbiosis.
February 7, 2008
adoarns commented on the word endosymbiont
Chloroplasts are also thought to be the descendants of endosymbiotic bacteria. Mitochondria and chloroplasts both have a genome separate from the main nuclear DNA, though most of their day-to-day functions have been shifted to the cell nucleus.
Interestingly, some biologists advocate that the eukaryotic flagellum is also a descendant of an endosymbiont, specifically a spirochete, a kind of spiral-shaped bacterium. This has less traction, so far.
February 7, 2008