In “The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes in the light of phylogenomics” (Genome Biology 2010, 11:209 ) Eugene V Koonin argues for endosymbiosis (organisms ingest other organisms, but the latter remain alive and provide a new function for the whole) to explain eukaryotes (complex cells, not bacteria):
Phylogenomics of eukaryote supergroups suggest a highly complex last common ancestor of eukaryotes and a key role of mitochondrial endosymbiosis in the origin of eukaryotes.
Sure but he’s also argued for the multiverse to explain that too.
Despite considerable experimental and theoretical effort, no compelling scenarios currently exist for the origin of replication and translation, the key processes that together comprise the core of biological systems and the apparent pre-requisite of biological evolution. The RNA World concept might offer the best chance for the resolution of this conundrum but so far cannot adequately account for the emergence of an efficient RNA replicase or the translation system.
The MWO version of the cosmological model of eternal inflation could suggest a way out of this conundrum because, in an infinite multiverse with a finite number of distinct macroscopic histories (each repeated an infinite number of times), emergence of even highly complex systems by chance is not just possible but inevitable.
From the cosmological side, Smolin proposed the model of cosmic selection that extended the Darwinian principles to the evolution of the universe[65,66]. By contrast, here I propose a direct link between specific models of evolution of the physical and biological universes, with the latter being contingent on the validity of the former (MWO) as illustrated by simple calculations. Importantly, in this context, the validity of MWO is to be understood in a rather generic sense. For the present concept to hold, the only essential assumptions are that the universe is infinite [e.g., any (island) universe under MWO; the multiverse, per se, is not a must] and that the number of macroscopic histories in any finite region of spacetime is finite.
– E. Koonin (2007) “The cosmological model of eternal inflation and the transition from chance to biological evolution in the history of life,” Biology Direct.
Got that. G’bye science. Was fun. Really.