DailyDirt: You Tell Me That It's Evolution...
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
The number of zombie apocalypse movies has been growing over the last few years, introducing "fast-moving" zombies and new kinds of swarming behaviors for the undead. The causes of the zombie apocalypse range from viral to supernatural, but the general awareness of biotechnology's ability to create monsters is undeniable. Meanwhile, Mother Nature herself is creating her own deadly diseases (ahem, ebola) and is making them more difficult to eradicate. Here are just a few observations of evolution that we can hopefully learn from and use to prevent an extinction event.- Maybe you've heard of a strain of group A Streptococcus because you've had strep throat. Beginning in the 1980s, strep strains have acquired four (just 4!) genetic modifications -- via horizontal gene transfer and regular old mutation -- to become a flesh-eating (necrotizing fasciitis) infection. [url]
- Researchers are looking at populations of Escherichia coli under various conditions to try to capture snapshots of genetic evolution in progress. There may be constraints on evolution, and mutations might not be as random as they might initially appear. [url]
- The Permian-Triassic extinction (aka The Great Dying) was an event about 252 million years ago in which the majority of life on our planet was extinguished. The cause is uncertain, but a recent hypothesis suggests that the transfer of two genes from one type of bacteria to one type of archaea resulted in a microbial bloom that disrupted our planet's carbon cycle by pouring an exponentially-growing amount of methane into the atmosphere. [url]
Filed Under: archaea, biology, biotech, carbon cycle, e coli, evolution, flesh-eating bacteria, horizontal gene transfer, methane, mutation, necrotizing fasciitis, permian-triassic extinction, strep
