On 24 Jul 2003 22:54:10 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

Moosh:] wrote:
On 24 Jul 2003 10:45:20 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

Moosh:] wrote:
On 21 Jul 2003 12:09:43 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

But you are leaving it to the plant to do the organisation after it is
damaged. You are not specifically implanting genes to outwit the natural
scheme of adjustment.


You believe in Gaea?

More like what I posted recently:


Fritjof Capra already in 1996 reports about Kauffman (1993):

`sytems biologists have begun to portray the genome as a
self-organizing network capable of spontaneously producing new forms
of order. "We must rethink evolutionary biology," writes Stuart
Kauffman. "Much of the order we see in organisms may be the direct
result not of natural selection but of the natural order selection
was allowed to act on... Evolution is not just a tinkering ... It is
an emergent order honored and honed by selection."'

And I called this "surmise". But of course, what happens can be
charcterised in many ways.

I don't think randomity explains what goes on.

Well it can, so why look for fairies at the bottom of the garden?
Think of Ockham's razor.

So if survival in the past had come about through mutating more when under
stress, then that would happen again under stress. I think that is
accepted.

Chemical reactions occur when and where they can. There is no choice.
Evolution only progresses faster when much stress is about, coz the
less lucky organisms in the lottery of random mutations are dying off
all around, and only the few lucky ones survive.
Mutations are happening all the time, just not giving great advantage
to those who win them when times are good.

But the bacteria acquire mutations which then allow them to compete
better, so it is not random:

Mutations happen to them randomly. How does this (active) acquision
work?

This is the html version of the file
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New Zealand Institute of Gene Ecology

University of Canterbury
[...]

A grant application?

5.1.3.3. An example from the biomedical experience with antibiotics
and

resistance evolution is illustrative here. Many newly emerging
antibiotic

resistant strains of bacteria are less competitive than their
antibiotic-

susceptible parents in environments free of the antibiotic. This early

disadvantage, however, is soon lost. Many have assumed that resistance
to

current antibiotics would fade when new antibiotics were developed
partly

because resistant strains were less fit in antibiotic-free
environments.

However, it is clear now that resistant strains can acquire
competition-

compensatory mutations while growing in antibiotics (Bjorkman et al.,

1998; Bjorkman et al., 2000; Schrag and Perrot, 1996; Schrag et al.,
1997).

By the time the antibiotic is removed from the environment, the
strains are

as fit or more fit than their parents even in antibiotic-free
environments.

Antibiotics, in this case, serve as an umbrella supporting the
evolution of

initially uncompetitive phenotypes.
__________________________________________________ _______________


And anyway it is hard to tell that sort of thing from a Gaia if there is
one.

What was the origin of the first enzymes?

Random mutation that allowed a chemical change to occur more readily.

What was there to mutate before the first enzymes?

Any old DNA that expressed a protein. Sounds unlikely, but over
millions of years.

What biochemical
reaction has ever worked without an enzyme?

Many of them. Enzymes just happen to be the way metabolic pathways are
"controlled". Because a reaction goes a certain way with a specific
enzyme coz the energy requirements are lower than going another way,
does not mean that there are not many reactions requiring so little
energy that they can procede without enzymes.