Thecrisis came for microbiology in 1962, when the term (and concept)"
procaryote" slithered onto the scene Theofficial history
that accompanied the reintroduction of the"
procaryote" was that the "procaryote-eucaryote" dichotomywas actually not new. It was a prescient insight on the part ofthe protozoologist Edouard Chatton in the 1930s (8, 45). The formerare the
bacteria and bluegreen algae... In 1949 Pringsheim, aprominent bacteriologist and contemporary of Chatton, thoroughlyreviewed the literature regarding the relationship of the blue-greenalgae (Myxophyceae) to the bacteria and concluded thatalthough the bulk of the latter (the eubacteria) were not related tothe cyanobacteria (Myxophyceae), the myxobacteria, whichmicroscopically appeared to be apochlorotic cyanobacteria, mightwell be (34). The term does not appear in the text. Thequestion of the phylogenetic relationships and the cellularorganization of bacteria should have remained as active and alive asthe questions of the origin of the chloroplasts and mitochondriawere at the time (39). It stripped the organism from its environment;separated it from its history, from the evolutionary flow; andshredded it into parts to the extent that a sense of the whole—thewhole cell, the whole multicellular organism, the biosphere—waseffectively gone. The time has come for biology to enter thenonlinear world. Nextcomes the evolution of the eucaryotic cell itself. In the first case, we speakof tRNA "adaptors"; in the second, of morphogenetic fields; in the third, of language. Finallythere are the genes that define the organizational fabric of thecell, those that give the cell its basic character. The answer is simple andlies in the connectedness of the componentry . Yet progressivechanges in the design of cells are the essence of cellularevolution. I would claim that the notion is inherent inthe way the translation mechanism must have evolved. It is evenreasonable to see the code originating as a lingua franca, being theproduct of, and belonging to, the community from the start. The19th was biology's defining century. Giventhe temper of the times, the entry of chemistry and physics intobiology was inevitable.