ReviewCold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology2014
Bioenergetic constraints on the evolution of complex life.
Review in Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 141 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Maximum Growth Temperature for Eukaryotes Is Thermodynamically Driven but Ecologically Contingent.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- On the nature of the earliest known lifeforms.eLife · 2026Article
- Similar growth potentials of cyanobacteria and algae explain their coexistence in desert soils.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Tracing the evolutionary pathway: on the origin of mitochondria and eukaryogenesis.The FEBS journal · 2025Article
- A kinetic dichotomy between mitochondrial and nuclear gene expression processes.Molecular cell · 2024Article
- Chapter 5: Major Biological Innovations in the History of Life on Earth.Astrobiology · 2024Article
- Intracellular signaling in proto-eukaryotes evolves to alleviate regulatory conflicts of endosymbiosis.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- A kinetic dichotomy between mitochondrial and nuclear gene expression drives OXPHOS biogenesis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Trajectories of freshwater microbial genomics and greenhouse gas saturation upon glacial retreat.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Metabolic compatibility and the rarity of prokaryote endosymbioses.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Mitonuclear Interactions and the Origin of Macaque Societies.Genome biology and evolution · 2023Article
- The role of mitochondrial energetics in the origin and diversification of eukaryotes.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- The role of mitonuclear incompatibilities in allopatric speciation.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2022Review
- Autophagy and longevity: Evolutionary hints from hyper-longevous mammals.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2022Review
- The economics of organellar gene loss and endosymbiotic gene transfer.Genome biology · 2021Article
- Building Better Barrels - β-barrel Biogenesis and Insertion in Bacteria and Mitochondria.Journal of molecular biology · 2021Review
- Mitochondria.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology · 2021Review
- Timing the origin of eukaryotic cellular complexity with ancient duplications.Nature ecology & evolution · 2021Article
- Genome expansion in early eukaryotes drove the transition from lateral gene transfer to meiotic sex.eLife · 2020Article
- Genetic hitchhiking, mitonuclear coadaptation, and the origins of mt DNA barcode gaps.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
All morphologically complex life on Earth, beyond the level of cyanobacteria, is eukaryotic. All eukaryotes share a common ancestor that was already a complex cell. Despite their biochemical virtuosity, prokaryotes show little tendency to evolve eukaryotic traits or large genomes. Here I argue that prokaryotes are constrained by their membrane bioenergetics, for fundamental reasons relating to the origin of life. Eukaryotes arose in a rare endosymbiosis between two prokaryotes, which broke the energetic constraints on prokaryotes and gave rise to mitochondria. Loss of almost all mitochondrial genes produced an extreme genomic asymmetry, in which tiny mitochondrial genomes support, energetically, a massive nuclear genome, giving eukaryotes three to five orders of magnitude more energy per gene than prokaryotes. The requirement for endosymbiosis radically altered selection on eukaryotes, potentially explaining the evolution of unique traits, including the nucleus, sex, two sexes, speciation, and aging.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.