Miklausen's 1997 book

[Ken Kinman]

Curtis, et al.,
    Reading Miklausen's book this weekend was a very strange experience.
Once I realized that he doesn't believe in the endosymbiotic origin of
eukaryotic organelles, I began to wonder if I would find anything useful in
this book.  He has prochlorophyte prokaryotes evolving into eukaryotic brown
algae, and the latter polyphyletically giving rise to various branches of
bryophytes and tracheophytes.   Monocots are purported to be more closely
related to sphenophytes than they are to the dicots.  A sort of biological
twlight zone, so to speak, in my opinion.
     However, he shows great clarity of thought in discussing some aspects
of the origins of life, that they were phototrophs evolving in cold
circumpolar waters (not thermophilic, as Woese has much of the world now
believing) and that chlorophylls did indeed precede bacterio- chlorophylls.
These ideas on early life are not presently very popular, but on those
particulars I can agree with Miklausen.
     So I can't help but wonder if there might not be some other small
pockets of wisdom in his botanical arguments, even though the major thrust
of the book seems to make very little sense.  That is why I would be
interested in reading any reviews on this book, if any exist, especially by
botanists.
     It still seems to me likely possibility that charophytes might not be
the sole ancestors of bryophytes and other land plants, and there was an
infusion of genes from other groups---if not phaeophytes, then perhaps fungi
(I've now forgotten who proposed that), or some other group of protists
(perhaps other hypotheses have been made that I have never heard of).  I am
still not enough of a botanist to know if there are any valuable nuggets of
botanical information buried in the Miklausen book.
                         ---Ken

>On Tue, 17 Aug 1999 22:23:33 -0700,
>  Curtis Clark wrote:
>>     I'm not familiar with Miklausen's work, but, despite the remarkable
>>convergence in some aspects between phaeophytes and vascular plants, there
>>are many, many lines of evidence that refute that hypothesis.
>>
>MY QUESTION:
>    I would be most interested in anyone's ideas on what are the strongest
>lines of evidence that refute brown algal origins of metaphytes (and
>support the traditional green algal origins).
>    Also, if there are any good published accounts that discuss such lines
>of evidence, I would be interested in hearing of them.  I have only skimmed
>through Anthony Miklausen's 1997 book (The Brown Algal Origin of Land
>Plants).  But as I evaluate it more carefully, such lines of evidence (or
>reviews of this book, if any), would be valuable aids in evaluating his
>ideas.
>                         --Ken Kinman


_______________________________________________________________
Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com