The Origins of Photosynthesis

            The article selected for this analytical essay was "How the First Plant Came to Be," by David Biello conversing about Dana Price and the discovery she made. The main argument that is presented in this article is that the glaucophyte Cyanophora paradoxa has a genome of about 70 million base pairs, however; only modern plants have the gene to make the merger of photosynthesizer and a larger host cell possible meaning that capture had to have happened only one time. In my opinion, since they both can self-replicate and have their own DNA it show how they were once not dependent. Chloroplast and mitochondria "highflyer" of the parent cells and could subsist on their own. ATP is used in photosynthesis making it having a connection. Having an organelle that is so intriguing coming from a mutation just sounds insane. However, there could have been lots of organelles that were never passed down, which would have no record of existence. .
             As stated in the article "According to the analysis of C. paradoxa's genome of roughly 70 million base pairs, this capture must have occurred only one because most modern plants share the genes that make the merger of photosynthesizer and larger host cell possible. Not only was the original host and the free-ranging photosynthesizer needed to have that coalition but also from a bacterial parasite. "These three entities forged the nascent organelle, and the process was aided by multiple horizontal gene transfers as well form other bacteria," said biologist Debashish Bhattacharya of Rutgers University. Before the success of life and the hardened cell walls of plants coming to be gene picking was expected to be happening. As a matter of fact, events like this are so distinct that evolutionary biologists could only find one same example being the photosynthetic amoeba Paulinella that also showed to have come form cyanobacteria.