Evolution
The Golgi, ER, and lysosomes are likely to have evolved as a result of the plasma membrane going through invagination. An increase in the overall volume of a cell would require the plasma membrane to fold in order to maintain a constant surface area to volume ratio. These folds may have led to the specialization of internal membranes to maintain communication with the environment. In the first stages of eukaryotic cell life, the membranes may have been interconnected and attached to the plasma membrane. Later on, as their functions diverged, the membranes may have become separate structures.
Read more about this topic: Endomembrane System
Famous quotes containing the word evolution:
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)
“The evolution of humans can not only be seen as the grand total of their wars, it is also defined by the evolution of the human mind and the development of the human consciousness.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)