Hi CTD

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Bacteria and other single-celled lifeforms have mechanisms which shuffle their DNA when they reproduce, so that they are not all identical.


The name of the process is mutation. Genes mutate during reproduction because the reproduction is imperfect, and thus does not result in perfect copies, clones, of the parent organism.

This is the same process that occurs in reproduction of multicellular organisms.

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The same word is used, but there are some pretty important differences.

The cells which make up a body try to make perfect duplicates as replacements, unless some adaptive mechanism is directing them to do otherwise.
They are perfect except where they are not perfect: a curious circular and meaningless answer, but irrelevant because it too is wrong. Cells don't "try" to do anything in the usual sense of "try" - what they do is live reproduce and die like bacterial cells. They reproduce by mitosis, the same process used for bacterial cells reproduction. Cells that make up the body are not perfect duplicates, they are just as susceptible to reproduction mutations as bacterial cells.

The same word is used because the process is identical.

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Doesn't sound like a "colony of cells" to me. More like an integrated, well-planned structure.
Which is just another way to describe a colony of cells.

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A well verified, but seldom stated result of the shuffling of the bacteria's genetic material is that a small percentage of bacteria always have been and always will be resistant to antibiotics.
Yes, that is the benefit of have several variations due to neutral mutations within populations that accumulate over time. The process whereby most of the population dies and only those that are resistant survive is called natural selection: they pass on their antibiotic resistant genes to their offspring, something the dead bacteria are not capable of doing, eh?

Thanks for giving us a good example of evolution in action.

Enjoy.

Last edited by RAZD; 07/12/08 10:01 PM. Reason: deleted duplicate text