Cepelewicz: The very existence of organelles in these bacteria, coupled with intriguing parallels to the more familiar ones that characterize eukaryotes, has prompted scientists to revise how they think about the evolution of cellular complexity — all while offering new ways to probe the basic principles that underlie it.
Tag: bacteria
Algae routinely steal genes from bacteria
One wonders how much of their genome they steal from more closely related species (as opposed to schoolbook Darwinian evolution).
Another Darwin-kicker?: Diversity-Generating Retroelements (DGR)
A reader writes: They have a mechanism by which they can mutate a specific part of the DNA, in a pattern and rate that’s different from random mutation.
What? Harmful bacteria “masquerade” as red blood cells?
She explains: “Once we kind of came to that idea, it all sort of fell into place.” Indeed, Madam Professor! You follow brilliantly in the footsteps of Miss Marple. We need intelligence to uncover this because intelligence underlies it.
The bacterial flagellar hook as a universal joint
A friend points out that the paper just describes the intricate machinery of the hook, adding to what we know, without any resort to Darwinspeak. It seems to be getting safer all the time to just not talk that way any more.
Researchers: Horizontal gene transfer allowed plants to move to land
This explanation makes explicit that this is not Darwinian evolution. One writeup even alludes to the type of Darwinian tale that is being replaced.
Bacteria harpoon DNA from their environment, to fight antibiotics
Wait. What does this story remind us of? Oh yes, recently a writer at The Atlantic went so far as to express doubt about the claim of a Darwin-in-the-schools lobbyist that everyone needs to buy into their approach to evolution if we want to understand superbugs.
Bacteria thrive via non-Darwinian “survival of the friendliest”
“In the classic Darwinian mindset, competition is the name of the game. The best suited survive and outcompete those less well suited. However, when it comes to microorganisms like bacteria, our findings reveal the most cooperative ones survive,” explains Department of Biology microbiologist, Professor Søren Johannes Sørensen.
Should we infect Mars with bacteria?
Natalie Coleman at Futurism: A paper published last month … argues that the “primary colonists” of the Red Planet should be “microorganisms” — the bacteria, viruses, and fungi that support many of life’s processes here on Earth.
Microbes found in some of Earth’s oldest known uncontaminated water
How they got there is apt to be a cause of speculation.
Who knew bacteria could trap light without chlorophyll?
We are “trained,” if you like, to expect certain discoveries (dark matter, for example). Then we learn something significant that really surprises us and allows for new thinking about, for example, ecology.
Researchers: Photosynthesis may be a billion years older than thought … But WAIT!
“Dr Cardona also suggests that this might mean oxygenic photosynthesis was not the product of a billion years of evolution from anoxygenic photosynthesis, but could have been a trait that evolved much sooner, if not first.” So when did the billions of years of Darwinian evolution that “gradually evolved” photosynthesis happen?
How bacteria use harpoons to speed horizontal gene transfer
Well, if that’s a way bacteria evolve, what becomes of common descent and speciation? What do we mean by “bacterial species”?
“Interspecies communication” strategy between gut bacteria and mammalian hosts’ genes described
Funny how all this just somehow happens even though “ There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws’. If the “fixed laws” produce all this communication, they are clearly intelligence operating under the name “laws.” This is just not what laws do.
John Sanford on claims about brand new nylonase genes
Recently, we noted that John Sanford was speaking at NIH on human health and mutations. Philip Cunningham writes to mention a 2017 paper by Sanford and S. T. Cordova, Nylonase Genes and Proteins – Distribution, Conservation, and Possible Origins on whether the ba cteria that digest nylon evolved new genes: We began this work hoping Read More…