From Caroline Herzenberg
Carrie Arnold discusses the idea that symbiotic microbes help drive the evolution of their hosts (12 January, p 30). Could a collection of microbes in the very distant past, a precursor of our present-day microbiome, have started the whole co-evolutionary process? Perhaps by wrapping itself in a protective outer layer of cohesive cells, it eventually evolved into a multicellular organism in its own right, and housed the microbiome – that is, the precursor of “us”.
We might think of the microbiome not just as a creator of species, as described, but even as the originator of multicellular organisms. Is the microbiome in charge, with we humans mere packaging?
Chicago, Illinois, US
