We were taught that mitochondrias, ribosomes and chloroplasts were all
originally independent microrganisms.
Somewhere sometime they survived within the protoplast of our ancestor,
a phagocyte. One thing lead to another, and today there's a symbiosis on
the most basic cellular level.
I've recently thought about that possibility, that life experience can
be genetically imprinted in ribosomes and\or mitochondrias (as their
life cycle is shorter than ours), thereby passing experiences to the
next generation. But why the hell would *our* experiences be stored in
*their* DNA? You can answer that rather philosophcally, by saying that
"they" are actually the thinking part of us (the one which raises the
question), while the whole cell, the phagocyte's offspring, is our serf.
Thoughts, all?