Mayr vs. Woese: Who's really in default?

[Ken Kinman]

      This is a brief preview of a much longer paper I am writing about
Woese's reaction to Ernst Mayr's perspective on this very important
debate concerning the future of biology (PNAS, 95:9720-23; PNAS,
95:11043-46).  Having reread Woese's last two papers, I can no longer be
angry with him (although the frustration remains).  Now I am just
greatly saddened.
     Woese's characterization of Mayr's perspective as default taxonomy
is particularly sad.  It is not Mayr who who is retreating into a
default position---he is defending a sound and widely-held taxonomic and
theoretical framework for biology.  Ironically, it seems to me that it
is Woese's arguments that are slowly retreating from his faltering 3
Domains, backwards into the murky, untestable morass of the Three
Urkingdoms.  Lateral gene transfer should be invoked when it can be
reasonably demonstrated or inferred, not used like an intellectual
"crutch" every time the evidence counters preconceived notions (Woese
should decry this tendency, not enourage it).
     If one considers all of the evidence, massive lateral gene transfer
probably did play a major role in the RNA world and early DNA world.
However, I am convinced that all early life was eubacterial (sensu
lato), and that Metabacteria (= "Archaea"/"Archaebacteria") arose up to
a billion years later from Class Togobacteracea.  This is very probably
the main reason eukaryotes did not arise earlier than they did.  This
viewpoint fits ALL the evidence, as is much more testable (i.e.
scientific).  And if you got the mistaken impression from Woese's paper
that eukaryotes arose one billion years ago, he failed to properly
distinguish between prokaryotic microbes and eukaryotic microbes.
Eukaryotes arose at least 2.1 billion years ago, and probably hundreds
of millions years before that).  This is not a debate of microbiologists
versus the rest of biology, for there is a huge amount of diversity
among eukaryotic microbes.
     Woese is correct that this is no taxonomic "quibble", for it is a
struggle to properly steer biology in the most fruitful direction.  But
I strongly believe that this stills leaves unaddressed the greater
damage caused by one of the byproducts of the Three Domain
view---namely, misrooted and severely distorted eubacterial phylogenies
and classifications.  Dr. Mayr has done an excellent job of summarizing
the debate from an overall perspective, and I will therefore concentrate
on the perspective from deep within eubacterial evolution, which has
been so distorted and trivialized by Woese's Three Domains (a.k.a. Three
Urkingdoms).  Hopefully Woese will eventually realize the flaws in his
paradigm.  Microbiology can and should be moving even faster than it is
(and certainly with less confusion), for we already have huge amounts of
data.  It only needs to be reinterpreted.
                                           Kenneth E. Kinman
                                           P.O. Box 1377
                                           Hays, Kansas  67601
 homepage:  www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/5074

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