Definition of "autotroph"

It is likely that the long evolutionary trajectory of Mycoplasma went from a reductive autotroph to oxidative heterotroph to a cell-wall–defective degenerate parasite. This evolutionary trajectory assumes the simplicity to complexity route of biogenesis, a point of view that is not universally accepted.

2013 March, Harold J. Morowitz, “The Smallest Cell”, in American Scientist‎, volume 101, number 2, archived from the original on 4 January 2017, page 83