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Endocytosis is said to be an exclusively eukaryotic property. Why did prokaryotes not develop this ability?
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This year a cool paper appeared in PLoS biology about the evolution of membrane coat proteins. It turns out that there are bacteria out there that have internal vesicles, and have structural proteins much like ours to form them. All prokaryotes with such membranes are members of the superphylum of Planctomycetes, Verrucomicrobia and Chlamydiae (PVC). Maybe the PVC's are our closest prokaryote nephews...
I wrote a blog post on this subject on Lab Rat's blog: http://madlabrat.blogspot.com/2010/01/guest-post-dont-judge-cell-by-its-coat.html
Posted by: Lucas | April 30, 2010 at 02:40 AM