Renier
Posts: 276
Joined: Jan. 2006
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Oh no. Afdave has done it. He has refuted evolution!!! Our evil plot is exposed, run to the hills!!! Or, wait..
| Quote | # Antibiotic resistance in bacteria
In modern times antibiotics, drugs that target specific features of bacteria, have become very popular. Bacteria evolve very quickly so it is not surprising that they have evolved resistance to antibiotics. As a general thing this involves changing the features that antibiotics target.
Commonly, but not always, these mutations decrease the fitness of the bacteria, i.e., in environments where there are not antibiotics present, they don't reproduce as quickly as bacteria without the mutation. This is not always true; some of these mutations do not involve any loss of fitness. What is more, there are often secondary mutations that restore fitness.
Bacteria are easy to study. This is an advantage in evolutionary studies because we can see evolution happening in the laboratory. There is a standard experiment in which the experimenter begins with a single bacterium and lets it reproduce in a controlled environment. Since bacteria reproduce asexually all of its descendents are clones. Since reproduction is not perfect mutations happen. The experimenter can set the environment so that mutations for a particular attribute are selected. The experimenter knows both that the mutation was not present originally and, hence, when it occurred.
In the wild it is usually impossible to determine when a mutation occurred. Usually all we know (and often we do not even know that) is the current distribution of particular traits.
The situation with insects and pesticides is similar to that of bacteria and antibiotics. Pesticides are widely used to kill insects. In turn the insects quickly evolve in ways to become immune to the pesticides.
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Actually Afdave, just read This
I really don't see what the problem is. Are you saying that the change Bacteria undergoes disproves evolution, or are you on about "increase in genetic information"?
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