The best is the enemy of the good
Slightly helpful mutations in E. coli much more plentiful than thought.
Beneficial mutations in the bacterium Escherichia coli occur 1,000 times more frequently than previously predicted, according to research from a group in Portugal.
Read the story here.
Comments
All that is being said is that differencial reproductive rates occur over a wide spread. There are not just "normal" and "super" bugs, there are graduations.
Whether this has any power to explain any really large transitions in phenotypes is diffifult to determine.
Between the number one and the number two, we may place a thousand small gradations. Increasing the numbers of these small intervals does not help us jump orders of magnitude.
Genetically, the changes we need for significant evolutionary changes are like jumping orders of magnitude.
Posted by: Mark | August 11, 2007 11:43 PM
It isn't clear how they
determined which of the
many mutations observed
was beneficial.
Perhaps they tested each
genetic mutational variant
for antibiotic resistance -
but the article doesn't
say that.
Posted by: don epstein | August 14, 2007 08:20 AM