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Konstantin Mereschkowski

 

 
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Konstantin Mereschkowski
 
 
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Konstantin Sergejewicz Mereschkowsky (1855-1921) (also transliterated
Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
 Konstantin Sergeevich Merezhkovsky, Konstantin Sergivich Merezhkovsky, Constantin Sergeevic Mérejkovski, Constantin Sergejewicz Mereschcowsky, and Konstantin Sergejewicz Mereschkovsky) was a prominent Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
n biologist
Biologist

A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life.Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment....
 and botanist active mainly around Kazan
Kazan

Kazan is the capital types of inhabited localities in Russia of the Tatarstan, Russia, and one of Russia's largest cities. It is a major industrial, commercial and cultural center, and remains the most important center of Tatar culture....
, whose research on lichens led him to propose the theory of symbiogenesis
Symbiogenesis

Symbiogenesis is the merging of two separate organisms to form a single new organism. The idea originated with Konstantin Mereschkowsky in his 1926 book Symbiogenesis and the Origin of Species, which proposed that chloroplasts originate from cyanobacteria captured by a protozoan....
 - that larger, more complex
Complexity

In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are reflected in this article....
 cells
Cell (biology)

The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known Life organisms. It is the smallest unit of an organism that is classified as living, and is often called the building bricks of life....
 evolved
Evolution

In biology, evolution is change in the heritability trait of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. These changes are caused by a combination of three main processes: variation, reproduction, and selection....
 from the symbiotic relationship between less complex ones.






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Konstantin Sergejewicz Mereschkowsky (1855-1921) (also transliterated
Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
 Konstantin Sergeevich Merezhkovsky, Konstantin Sergivich Merezhkovsky, Constantin Sergeevic Mérejkovski, Constantin Sergejewicz Mereschcowsky, and Konstantin Sergejewicz Mereschkovsky) was a prominent Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
n biologist
Biologist

A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life.Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment....
 and botanist active mainly around Kazan
Kazan

Kazan is the capital types of inhabited localities in Russia of the Tatarstan, Russia, and one of Russia's largest cities. It is a major industrial, commercial and cultural center, and remains the most important center of Tatar culture....
, whose research on lichens led him to propose the theory of symbiogenesis
Symbiogenesis

Symbiogenesis is the merging of two separate organisms to form a single new organism. The idea originated with Konstantin Mereschkowsky in his 1926 book Symbiogenesis and the Origin of Species, which proposed that chloroplasts originate from cyanobacteria captured by a protozoan....
 - that larger, more complex
Complexity

In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are reflected in this article....
 cells
Cell (biology)

The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known Life organisms. It is the smallest unit of an organism that is classified as living, and is often called the building bricks of life....
 evolved
Evolution

In biology, evolution is change in the heritability trait of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. These changes are caused by a combination of three main processes: variation, reproduction, and selection....
 from the symbiotic relationship between less complex ones. He presented this theory in 1909, in his Russian work, The Theory of Two Plasms as the Basis of Symbiogenesis, a New Study or the Origins of Organisms, although the fundamentals of the idea already had appeared in his earlier 1905 work, The nature and origins of chromatophores in the plant kingdom.

He was inspired by his work as a leading lichenologist - lichens were of major interest at the time as it had recently been shown that they exhibit a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae
Algae

Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms. The largest and most complex marine forms are called seaweeds....
. Around the turn of the century he collected
Collecting

The hobby of collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever items are of interest to the individual collector....
 a sizeable lichen herbarium
Herbarium

In botany, a herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens. These specimens may be whole plants or plant parts: these will usually be in a dried form, mounted on a sheet, but depending upon the material may also be kept in alcohol or other preservative....
, containing over 2000 specimens from lands in Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
, Austria
Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....
 and around the Mediterranean. The collection is currently in the possession of Kazan University. He also studied hydras.

Merezhkovsky rejected Darwinian evolutionary theory. He did not believe that natural selection
Natural selection

Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable trait become more common in successive generations of a population of Reproduction organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of genotypes....
 could explain biological novelty, positing instead the acquisition and inheritance of microbes as central. He was criticised by another Russian lichenologist, Alexandr Alexandrovich Elenkin.

Although the modern evolutionary synthesis
Modern evolutionary synthesis

The modern evolutionary synthesis is a union of ideas from several biology specialties which forms a logical account of evolution. This synthesis has been generally accepted by most working biologists....
 supports Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Merezhovsky's ideas of symbiogenesis are reflected in the modern endosymbiotic theory
Endosymbiont

An endosymbiont is any organism that lives within the body or cells of another organism, i.e. forming an endosymbiosis . Examples are nitrogen-fixing bacterium which live in root nodules on legume roots, single-celled algae inside reef-building corals, and bacterial endosymbionts that provide essential nutrients to about 10%?15% of in...
 developed and popularised by Lynn Margulis
Lynn Margulis

Lynn Margulis is an United States biologist and University Professor in the Earth science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is best known for her theory on the origin of eukaryote organelles, and her contributions to the endosymbiotic theory?which is now generally accepted for how certain Mitochondrion were formed....
. In this, organelle
Organelle

In cell biology, an organelle is a specialized subunit within a cell that has a specific function, and is usually separately enclosed within its own lipid membrane....
s such as chloroplast
Chloroplast

Chloroplasts are organelles found in plant cells and other eukaryote organisms that conduct photosynthesis. Chloroplasts capture light energy to conserve Thermodynamic free energy in the form of Adenosine triphosphate and reduce NADP to NADPH through a complex set of processes called photosynthesis....
s and mitochondria
Mitochondrion

In cell biology, a mitochondrion is a membrane-enclosed organelle found in most eukaryote cell . These organelles range from 0.5–10 micrometers in diameter....
 are the descendants of bacteria
Bacteria

The Bacteria are a large group of unicellular microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals....
 that evolved into an intracellular
Intracellular

Not to be confused with intercellular, meaning "between cells".In cell biology, molecular biology and related fields, the word intracellular means "inside the cell "....
 symbiosis with early eukaryotic
Eukaryote

Animals, plants, fungus, and protists are eukaryotes , organisms whose Cell are organized into complex structures enclosed within Cell membrane....
 cells.