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To the Editor:
The report of the article by Tovar et al. in Nature (November 13) suggests that the discovery of reduced “remnant” mitochondria in Giardia is novel. In fact, Cheissin (1965) has electron micrographs showing this, as do the papers from my group published in 2002.
So we have long realized that these organisms are neither simple nor primitive, but derived from aerobes at the crown of the evolutionary tree.
Where early eukaryotic phylogeny is studied, it is ill-advised to choose parasites!
Professor David Lloyd ( LloydD@cardiff.ac.uk)
Cardiff School of Biosciences
Dear Editor:
Regarding “Giant leaps, not small steps” by Cathy Holding:
What a joke! A single gene causes a flower to vary from red to yellow-orange and various degrees of pink. Both red and pink varieties are described as wild species, and they can be and were crossbred. Not surprisingly, the pollinators that specialize in one or the other of the wild types aren't so exclusive when it comes to the crossbreeds.
This is supposed to be a simulation of a “giant leap” in evolution? You can't be serious! The natural understanding of what this suggests is that there was an original population with free interbreeding between the slight variations, and now specialization has lead to a distinction between the remaining two, which we have deemed “species.” Nothing at all new has developed.
Over 140 years since Darwin published his big book, and THIS is the cutting edge of evolutionary research? This would be laughable in any other field of science. It's like physicists still trying to figure out how to split the atom.
Sincerely,
Flushing, Mich.
References
| 1. | | [http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20031113/02/]
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| | | D. Secko, “Mitosomes rewrite evolutionary theory,” The Scientist, November 13, 2003.
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| 2. | | D. Lloyd, J.C. Harris, “Giardia: highly evolved parasite or early branching eukaryote?” Trends in Microbiology, 10:122-127, March 2002.
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| 3. | | [http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20031113/01]
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| | | C. Holding, “Giant leaps, not small steps,” The Scientist, November 13, 2003.
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