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Ten Reasons Bacteria is [censored] Awesome
February 12, 2011 at 1:59 am
I try to keep up with a lot of sciences. Mostly astronomy and physics, but this one honestly caught me by surprise. Some of the things on here I've known about for some time, but a few things on this list is just amazing.
Ten Things Bacteria Can Do That You Can't
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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RE: Ten Reasons Bacteria is [censored] Awesome
February 12, 2011 at 4:33 am
A fact that might surprise you - bacteria has extremely limited ability to undergo Darwinian evolution and speciation for a reason too simple yet to profound for any Christian fundamentalist to grasp, which is why they have not yet latched on to this fact as a basis for a spurious argument against evolution. This is also an argument against the prevalence of complex life in the universe.
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RE: Ten Reasons Bacteria is [censored] Awesome
February 12, 2011 at 7:01 am
Yup...Bacteria are just fucking AWESOME!! And we are just bags of bacteria...wonder if they have 'harnessed hominids' for their 'evolutionary' purposes???
Trippy thought I know...
"The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." G'Kar-B5
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RE: Ten Reasons Bacteria is [censored] Awesome
February 12, 2011 at 8:12 am
(February 12, 2011 at 4:33 am)Chuck Wrote: A fact that might surprise you - bacteria has extremely limited ability to undergo Darwinian evolution and speciation for a reason too simple yet to profound for any Christian fundamentalist to grasp, which is why they have not yet latched on to this fact as a basis for a spurious argument against evolution. This is also an argument against the prevalence of complex life in the universe.
And what is that reason? I am agog  hock:
![[Image: mybannerglitter06eee094.gif]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i118.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fo112%2Fpussinboots_photos%2FBikes%2Fmybannerglitter06eee094.gif)
If you're not supposed to ride faster than your guardian angel can fly then mine had better get a bloody SR-71.
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RE: Ten Reasons Bacteria is [censored] Awesome
February 12, 2011 at 11:39 am
(February 12, 2011 at 8:12 am)Zen Badger Wrote: (February 12, 2011 at 4:33 am)Chuck Wrote: A fact that might surprise you - bacteria has extremely limited ability to undergo Darwinian evolution and speciation for a reason too simple yet to profound for any Christian fundamentalist to grasp, which is why they have not yet latched on to this fact as a basis for a spurious argument against evolution. This is also an argument against the prevalence of complex life in the universe.
And what is that reason? I am agoghock:
Darwinian evolution and speciation requires that traits offering survival advantage be heritable. If an advantageous trait is lost with the death of it's possessor, then there is no evolution. If advantageous traits are not passed preferentially to the possessor's descendants, but are instead spread directly to other members in the same community, then there is no speciation.
As it turns out, unlike more complex nucleated cells, members of bacteria communities liberally passes their genes between each other in addition to passing them to their own descendants. As a result, a bacteria that possesses an advantageous gene may not pass it onto it's own descendants because it may swap this advantageous gene for an indifferent gene from a different member. So to an individual bacteria living in a community, advantageous genetic traits are not heritable in any sense specific to it's own genetic lineage. In fact, it has no real defined genetic lineage. Furthermore, because bacteria pass genes around, those in temporary possession of advantageous genes do not tend to collective lineage distinct from those who are not in possession of it. So there is no speciation.
How bacterias evolve, indeed whether it is meaningful to apply to bacteria the same taxonomical framework as complex life, is a point of debate in modern biology. Suffices it to say bacteria genetics puts a huge gulf between them and higher complex cells that is not easy to bridge.
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RE: Ten Reasons Bacteria is [censored] Awesome
February 12, 2011 at 11:45 am
A question chuck...
How do we explain MRSA? and say Anti-biotic resistant Klebsiella sp? Or any other species of Bacteria.
"The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." G'Kar-B5
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RE: Ten Reasons Bacteria is [censored] Awesome
February 12, 2011 at 12:10 pm
(February 12, 2011 at 11:45 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: A question chuck...
How do we explain MRSA? and say Anti-biotic resistant Klebsiella sp? Or any other species of Bacteria.
Bacteria in a isolated community can show evolution if selection pressure kills every member not in temporary possession of a certain advantageous gene. Soon prevalence of the advantageous gene would be so high that every member will have a high chance of possessing one or more copies however they exchange genes. But this is not the same as Darwinian evolution. Darwinian evolution does not require genetic isolation to function. Lineages with in an broad community can evolve. Bacteria, on the other hand, can't show distinct genetic lineages with a community. So either the community evolves, or no evolution.
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RE: Ten Reasons Bacteria is [censored] Awesome
February 12, 2011 at 12:19 pm
(February 12, 2011 at 12:10 pm)Chuck Wrote: (February 12, 2011 at 11:45 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: A question chuck...
How do we explain MRSA? and say Anti-biotic resistant Klebsiella sp? Or any other species of Bacteria.
Bacteria in a isolated community can show evolution if selection pressure kills every member not in temporary possession of a certain advantageous gene. Soon prevalence of the advantageous gene would be so high that every member will have a high chance of possessing one or more copies however they exchange genes. But this is not the same as Darwinian evolution. Darwinian evolution does not require genetic isolation to function. Lineages with in an broad community can evolve. Bacteria, on the other hand, can't show distinct genetic lineages with a community. So either the community evolves, or no evolution.
So are we talking in vitro colonies??
It always puzzles me how MRSA and Klesiella sp survive so well in most hospitals.
"The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." G'Kar-B5
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