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It’s time to retire the prokaryote

submitted by rortega on June 26, 2009

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Tags: microbiologybytes , normanpace , prokaryote

Source: www.microbiologybytes.com

Almost certain to spark debate, Norman Pace, in this article from Microbiology Today, argues that prokaryote as a word is outdated and should be eliminated from the microbiologist's vocabulary. He doubts that you even know what the term means and says , "the notion of prokaryote was scientifically illogical from the beginning because the definition, an “organism without a nucleus”, is a negative definition." What do you think? Does this make sense? Is it a logical conclusion to think microbiologists should rid themselves of the term as a whole?

Comments (2)

Chris Condayan makes this comment

Mon Jun 29 21:23:27 2009

For those of you who want to jump right to the article, here's the direct link http://www.sgm.ac.uk/pubs/micro_today/pdf/050903.pdf
Fiona Brinkman makes this comment

Thu Jul 2 20:03:28 2009

I still think it doesn't make sense to retire the term prokaryote. There are notable commonalities between Bacteria and Archaea, even though they are very divergent, and there are microbiologists studying both together. Its shorter to say "prokaryotes" instead of "Bacteria and Archaea", and this is the way this word is being used now.