Endosymbiotic theory dictates that mitochondria evolved before chloroplasts in eukaryotic evolution
Endosymbiotic theory and evolutionary studies confirm that mitochondria were acquired by the ancestral eukaryotic lineage prior to the subsequent acquisition of chloroplasts via cyanobacterial endosymbiosis.
The retrieved literature consistently supports the consensus that mitochondrial endosymbiosis was an early foundational event in eukaryogenesis, occurring long before the secondary and tertiary endosymbiotic events that gave rise to various plastids and chloroplasts in photosynthetic lineages. None of the papers refute this ordering.
Toni Gabaldón, Martijn A. Huynen. Lineage-specific gene loss following mitochondrial endosymbiosis and its potential for function prediction in eukaryotes. 2005. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/bti1124
Paper 3 discusses the endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria from an alpha-proteobacterium in early eukaryotes, which preceded later plastid acquisitions in photosynthetic lineages.
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Kay CJ, Spang A, Szöllősi GJ, Pisani D, Williams TA, Donoghue PCJ. Dated gene duplications elucidate the evolutionary assembly of eukaryotes.. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09808-z
Paper 9 establishes that mitochondrial endosymbiosis occurred after the formation of the complex eukaryotic host cell, providing the baseline for primary endosymbiosis events occurring before complex plastid (chloroplast) acquisition lineages.
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