Adaptive mutations: Evidence of an ID mechanism?

Adaptive mutations are mutations that occur in nondividing or slowly dividing cells during prolonged nonlethal selection, and that appear to be specific to the challenge of the selection in the sense that the only mutations that arise are those that provide a growth advantage to the cell. The issue of the specificity has been controversial because it violates our most basic assumptions about the randomness of mutations with respect to their effect on the cell. Although a variety of experiments in several systems in both bacteria and yeast have claimed to demonstrate that specificity, those experiments have been subjected to a variety of technical criticisms suggesting that the specificity may not be real. Here I use the ebg system to provide evidence that when selection is applied to one specific nucleotide site within a gene, mutation occurs at that site but not at an alternative and equally mutable site within the same gene.

Recent experiments by Galitski et al. [26] and Radicella et al. [27] began to confirm Ben-Jacob et al. [21] hypothesis, that in order to perform adaptive mutations (and other non-random mutations) the bacteria employ cybernetics elements (plasmids, in the case of Galitski et al. [26]), that transfer those mutations from cell to cell [27]. Thus those mutations can be "synchronized, autocatalytic and cooperative genetic variations" [21]. Although far from being generally accepted, a picture of problem-solving bacteria capable of adapting their genome to problems posed by the environment is emerging. This is a picture radically different from the contemporary picture of lifeless, passive DNA used as a memory storage for protein production.

'Adaptive mutations! Whats that all about then?'

What's wrong with that as a topic? In fact, someone claimed adaptive mutations were not real on another thread. There are obviously plenty of others that say it is real.

I really don't see what your beef is. Does something have to be stated in an adversarial manner to qualify? I don't think it does.

Certainly, the subject of adaptive mutations related to Biological Evolution, right?

randman writes:Wonder what the rules are for promoting your own topic, btw.

randman writes:I really don't see what your beef is. Does something have to be stated in an adversarial manner to qualify? I don't think it does.

Wonder what the rules are for promoting your own topic, btw.