The first eukaryotes evolved from ancestral prokaryotes by a process that involved membrane proliferation, the loss of a cell wall, the evolution of a cytoskeleton, and the acquisition and evolution of organelles. Nuclear eukaryotic genes appear to have had an origin in the Archaea, whereas the energy machinery of eukaryotic cells appears to be bacterial in origin. The mitochondria and plastids originated from endosymbiotic events when ancestral cells engulfed an aerobic bacterium (in the case of mitochondria) and a photosynthetic bacterium (in the case of chloroplasts). The evolution of mitochondria likely preceded the evolution of chloroplasts. There is evidence of secondary endosymbiotic events in which plastids appear to be the result of endosymbiosis after a previous endosymbiotic event.
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