From: Philos Anthropy (anthropy@inwave.com)
Date: Sun Dec 21 1997 - 02:05:45 MST
Anders Sandberg wrote:
> Thanks for using NetForward!
> http://www.netforward.com
> v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
>
> Philos Anthropy <anthropy@inwave.com> writes:
>
> > > Is conjugation that rare? I was on a lecture about how plasmids evolve
> > > (they are selfish replicators, after all, and do their best to
> > > maximize their fitness) and I got the impression they are sometimes
> > > almost littering the cellular environment.
> >
> > It may be more common than was portrayed in my Biochemistry book and
> > indicated by the professors I've had but it is biological "standard wisdom"
> > at least that bacteria usually reproduce asexually by mitotic division.
>
> Yes, nobody denies that. But I got the impression that plasmid
> exchanges are fairly common (at least so common that a beneficial gene
> such as antibiotics resistance can spread quite quickly through the
> population if needed).
>
I think that those bacteria that do not have antibiotic resistance all die out
and upwards of 90% may die out thus leaving plenty of resources/nutrients for
those few that do have such resistance. Thus it is still spreading primarily
asexually by "extinction" of those bacteria not as fit for survival. -Bill.
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
> asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
> GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:45:15 MST