Remember Rosie Redfield, who questioned NASA’s (since widely dismissed) claims for arsenic-eating bacteria*?
She now asks,
Depending on when I count from, I’ve spent the past twenty or thirty years trying to get people to think rigorously about whether bacteria have any processes that evolved to promote random recombination of chromosomal alleles or genes. And I’ve largely failed at this. A few people think my ideas are reasonable, but the great majority of microbiologists and evolutionary biologists continue to comfortably assume that genetic exchange happens in bacteria because it’s an evolutionary good thing. I’m still pretty sure they’re wrong, but I think I’ve done almost all I can to change their minds. I’m at a decision point. More.
Hat tip: Pos-Darwinista
* The find, had it held up, suggested new possibilities for identifying extraterrestrial organisms. Hence NASA’s interest.