apology and clarification

[Ken Kinman]

Brian,
     My apologies for transferring (to you) my frustrations with Woese.  We
clearly agree that there is a tremendous amount of diversity among both
prokaryotes and eukaryotes, and the diversity of prokaryotes is only
beginning to be discovered.
     I have never challenged the idea that "Archaea" is a valid taxon, or I
would have never made such an issue of the appropriateness of the older name
Metabacteria for this group.  Isoprenoid ether lipids seem to be one
characteristic that bears this out.  However, this is a very small jump from
the non-isoprenoid ether lipids found in thermophilic eubacteria (and even
the isoprenoid distinction could breakdown eventually).  And Woese's
influential statement, which he has not corrected, was clearly wrong when he
made it: "The branched-chain, ether-linked lipids, common to all
archaebacteria are found nowhere else in nature." (Woese, 1987:247).  That
1987 paper is one of the most often quoted papers in the history of biology,
and has many uncorrected errors, and I hope at the very least that the
widespread idea of an ester-ether dichotomy is soon corrected (it would
certainly come sooner if Woese would admit his errors).
     But even that issue is minor compared to misrooting and skewing of
eubacterial phylogenies.  And why Woese continues to spread this notion
about the thermophilic origins or life (now on PBS)----I think he will come
to regret making such an issue of such a dubious idea, and all those
contributions he made back in the 1970's (in particular) will be eclipsed.
He is skating on very thin ice, and since he persists in doing this, I can
only warn other microbiologists to avoid "skating" too near him.
      Anyway, here is the link to my homepage (with the text of some of my
preliminary papers on Woesian distortions), and near the top there is a link
to my 1998 paper (I threw this homepage together rather hurriedly, so it
isn't well organized):
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/5074
                         -------Ken Kinman
P.S.  Perhaps "stabilized" was not the best word in describing the
relatively uniformity of Metazoan rRNAs (compared to prokaryotes).  I wonder
how that could be phrased to better state that phenomenon.


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