Hey CTD,
The name of the process is Recombination. Errors in recombination are mutations.
This is you playing silly word games to fool yourself -- it is the same process, whichever way the mutation trends (beneficial to deleterious), recombination is just random mixing of genetic material during the reproduction of the genes in sexual reproduction (meiosis), due to the fact that replication is imperfect. We also have point mutations, where single amino acids are replaced with another amino acid, and these too occur randomly.
http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/Genetic_Recombination.phpInside the cells that produce sperm and eggs, chromosomes become paired. While they are pressed together, the chromosomes may break, and each may swap a portion of its genetic material for the matching portion from its mate. This form of recombination is called crossing-over. When the chromosomes glue themselves back together and separate, each has picked up new genetic material from the other. The constellation of physical characteristics it determines is now different than before crossing-over.
That's it in a nutshell: the mix of genes changes during replication, whether that change is beneficial, neutral or deleterious will depend on the ecology and other factors affecting growth, survival and reproduction ... ie - natural selection.
Recombination is also part of the process of meiosis, and not mitosis, which is the way skin cells reproduce
Genetic recombination happens during meiosis, a special type of cell division that occurs during formation of sperm and egg cells and gives them the correct number of chromosomes.
We were talking about how skin cells are like bacterial colonies, and how they even reproduce the same way, by mitosis, so when you introducing recombination this means either (1) you are trying to distract people with a different process or (2) you don't understand that recombination is not part of skin cell reproduction. Or both.
I have elsewhere provided a handful of links about recombination, and those who know what it is will be immunized against your deception.
Which doesn't keep you from being wrong because you misrepresent the material, nor does it keep you from not addressing the issue of skin cells reproducing by mitosis, a process that does not involve recombination.
There is generally no mechanism in the cells of a body which shuffles genetic information in order to ensure variety.
Correct, it is not done "in order to ensure variety" - it ensures variety because it is random, because replication is not perfect. Imperfect replication necessarily result in variety, some of which are beneficial, some of which are neutral and some of which are deleterious. We can actually watch and count and measure these so we do know that they fall across the spectrum from beneficial to deleterious.
An exception is the white blood cells. When needed, they shuffle like mad to try to find a better set-up to fight disease. And the reason immunization works, is because information is stored on every past disease they have ever had to fight. I don't know exactly how many details have been discovered recently about the ingenious workings of the immune system, but everything I do know is just amazing.
They make antibodies for foreign proteins and cells, and there is nothing magical about it. Sometimes they make a "mistake" and make antibodies for parts of the parent organism, and this is part of why organ rejection is a major problem in transplants. When sever enough the white blood cells can cause death by attacking the body rather than a disease.
Of course this is not what they are "trying" to do - it is just what they do as a part of living, eating and reproducing cells.
What's so integrated about the typical group of single-celled creatures? What planned structures do they form?
And yet you are so impressed by what white blood cells accomplish.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109913378/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0Bacteria do many things as organized populations. We have recently learned much about the molecular basis of intercellular communication among prokaryotes. Colonies display bacterial capacities for multicellular coordination which can be useful in nature where bacteria predominantly grow as films, chains, mats and colonies. E. coli colonies are organized into differentiated non-clonal populations and undergo complex morphogenesis. Multicellularity regulates many aspects of bacterial physiology, including DNA rearrangement systems. In some bacterial species, colony development involves swarming (active migration of cell groups). Swarm colony development displays precise geometrical controls and periodic phenomena. Motile E. coli cells in semi-solid media form organized patterns due to chemotactic autoaggregation. On poor media, B. subtilis forms branched colonies using group motility and longrange chemical signalling. The significances of bacterial colony patterns thus reside in a deeper understanding of prokaryotic biology and evolution and in experimental systems for studying self-organization and morphogenesis.
Obviously you have not looked closely at many colonial organisms, including sponges (remember sponges? They are part of the issue under discussion here), which have specialized tasks and share resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VolvoxVolvox is one of the best-known chlorophytes and is the most developed in a series of genera that form spherical colonies. Each Volvox is composed of numerous flagellate cells similar to Chlamydomonas, on the order of 1000–3000 in total, interconnected and arranged in a glycoprotein-filled sphere (coenobium). The cells swim in a coordinated fashion, with a distinct anterior and posterior – or since Volvox resembles a little planet, a 'north' pole and a 'south' pole. The cells have eyespots, more developed near the anterior, which enable the colony to swim towards light.
That looks pretty integrated to me, working toward a common goal and sharing the results.
From there we can go to sponges:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpongeThe sponges or poriferans (from Latin porus "pore" and ferre "to bear") are animals of the phylum Porifera (pronounced /p??r?f?r?/). Porifera translates to "Pore-bearer". They are primitive, sessile, mostly marine, water dwelling filter feeders that pump water through their bodies to filter out particles of food matter. Sponges represent the simplest of animals. With no true tissues (parazoa), they lack muscles, nerves, and internal organs. Their similarity to colonial choanoflagellates shows the probable evolutionary jump from unicellular to multicellular organisms. However, recent genomic studies suggest they are not the most ancient lineage of animals, but may instead be secondarily simplified.[1]
Again there is a division of tasks and some cells have different tasks than others, and they work as a community.
Or we can look at Siphonophorae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiphonophoreSiphonophorae or Siphonophora, the siphonophores, are an order of the Hydrozoa, a class of marine invertebrates belonging to the phylum Cnidaria. They are colonial, but the colonies can superficially resemble jellyfish; although they appear to be a single organism, each specimen actually a colony of Siphonophoraa. The best known species is the dangerous Portuguese Man o' War (Physalia physalis).
Or at Chondrophores
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChondrophoreChondrophores are the family Porpitidae, gelatinous cnidarians superficially resembling jellyfish but actually belonging to the hydrozoans. They look like a single organism but are actually colonial animals, made up of an orderly cooperative of polyps. The most familiar members are the Blue Button (Porpita porpita) and the By-the-wind Sailor (Velella velella).
The tiny individual animals are specialized to perform specific tasks; some form the central gas-filled disc (which is a golden brown colour and hardened by chitinous material) essential to keeping the colony afloat; others form radiating tentacles for tasks such as catching prey, reproduction, and digestion.
Seems to me that these colonial single cell organisms are more complex than skin ... so maybe I was overstating the case ...
Thanks for demonstrating how evolutinism must distort the truth. Resistance is a design feature. A simple way to figure out if something is the result of random mutation or designed recombination is to see if it regularly repeats. By definition, random mutation doesn't do this. But since resistance is the result of recombination, it will always turn up.
Since we are here talking about bacteria, and in particular bacteria that reproduce by mitosis and not by meiosis (sexual reproduction), and since we know that recombination is a part of meiosis (in particular for the formation of sex cells), we know that you either (1) are telling falsehoods, or (2) you really do not understand what you are talking about. Or both.
We can also test the bacterial colonies to see if the exact same mutation arises in each colony that develops resistance (the ones that die are mute on the subject, except to say that there was no magic there). We see that the mutations are different, and thus are not, cannot be, due to some magic handwaving hypothetical pre-program function.
Thanks for demonstrating how evolutinism must distort the truth.
And yet you are wrong in your description and wrong in your result. You mix up sexual reproduction with asexual reproduction, and you ignore cases where whole colonies perish when subject to the antibiotics to focus on only those that survive. You claim there is some magic mechanism that allows these colonies to survive, while ignoring the fact that different colonies, with different mutations to draw from, survive for different reasons.
The reason they survive is evolution, pure and simple: variation due to mutations, natural selection culling the ones not adapted and allowing those that have a beneficial mutation, no matter what it is, to survive.
Enjoy.
