Google:Symbiosis

On occasion, I run a Google search for "symbiosis" just to see what the latest biology on the web describes for the term. At the number one spot today came The Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, the link to which is not currently working. I just find it noteworthy that a Business Management school (its a .edu extension) would find the top slot for symbiosis! Can biology catch a break?

The apparent importance of symbiosis in business decisions notwithstanding, the #2 search return came back with this, an informative, if not very sexy, website for a biology curriculum: Kimball's Biology Pages. A brief perusal of the page shows Dr. Kimball's thorough understanding of symbiosis and its importance in modern applied science. He describes the three major types of symbiosis starting with mutualism and ending with parasitism. The page concludes with a brief speculation on how symbioses evolve. "It seems plausible that what begins as a parasitic relationship might over the course of time evolve into a mutualistic one as the two organisms evolve to minimize the damage to the host."

This process, he indicates, is supported by Kwang Jeons work with amoebae. This appears to be the current working model of the evolution of symbiosis and deserves much future discussion on this blog. The other important take away from this position is that it implies a "complex homeostasis" in symbioses, an area I devote a bit of attention to below.

The Jeon ameoba example suggests an energetic imbalance that is corrected by co-evolution. As a parasitic relationship, is the driving force, as Dr. Kimball asserts "the two organisms evolve to minimize the damage to the host"? This area is worth a closer look.

Image courtesy of the Center for Biological Sequence Analysis. No copyrights are known.