Structure
Mitochondria
Convert energy from food into ATP, the cell's usable energy.
Endosymbiosis
Mitochondria and chloroplasts descend from bacteria that came to live inside other cells long ago.Source: Sagan, 1967Source: Archibald, 2015
Step 5 of 7ReadingIdea or model
How Endosymbiosis connects
Endosymbiosis describes
Structure
Chloroplasts
Capture light energy to make sugar by photosynthesis.
Endosymbiosis is part of
Process
Evolution
The process by which living things change over generations through changes in their genomes.
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Sources & further reading
The explanations on this page are our own summaries of these sources. Follow a link to read the original; if anything here disagrees with it, the original wins. How we choose and check sources.
On the origin of mitosing cells (opens the original in a new tab)
Sagan L (1967). Journal of Theoretical Biology 14.
Lynn Margulis (then Sagan) argued that mitochondria and plastids descend from engulfed bacteria.
Historical paperTheory or modelEndosymbiosis and eukaryotic cell evolution (opens the original in a new tab)
Archibald JM (2015). Current Biology 25:R911-R921.
Peer-reviewedReview