Konstantin mereschkowski biography of mahatma

The best partnerships in life happen when both parties benefit from the arrangement, working together as a team to become more than the sum of their parts. And as it is in relationships, so it is with life itself.

In fact, the diversity and success of life on this planet may be the result of cells buddying up and moving in together, combining their resources to create new organisms with advantageous new skills. 

It’s an idea called endosymbiosis and it starts - as so many of our stories do - with the microscopists of the 19th century.

Let’s take a closer look.

In , German botanist Andreas Schimper published a volume of his observations of plants, focusing in particular on the colourful structures inside their cells such as the bright green, bean-shaped chloroplasts that are responsible for photosynthesis (presumably because they’re easy to see, what with being bright green…). 

In a footnote, he mentions a certain Professor Schmitz telling him that chloroplasts in algae