An Alternative to Evolution: bacterial species combination (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, September 05, 2020, 18:00 (1538 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTES: “They mix their machinery to survive or do metabolism, and that’s kind of extraordinary, because we always assumed that each and every organism has its own independent identity and machinery,” said Papoutsakis.

"Although this phenomenon of interspecies microbial fusion is now being reported for the first time, it is likely ubiquitous in nature among many bacterial pairs.”

"The team’s findings may influence understanding of the evolution of biology because once bacterial species share machinery, they can evolve together instead of only evolving on their own,” said Papoutsakis."

And under “Many species combination”

Quote: Horizontal gene transfer and mating between diverged lineages blur species boundaries and challenge the reconstruction of evolutionary histories of species and their genomes

DAVID: This is not evolution in the normally understood definition, but another way of advancing living forms. It is an advanced form of horizontal gene transfer, a method I think was provided by design.

And: The author then reviews many scattered studies which form the basis for his theory. This is not Darwin's evolution.

dhw: I don’t know why you have called this an “alternative to evolution”. It ties in with Lynn Margulis’ emphasis on cooperation as the key to how evolution works. The pooling of resources would have begun on a small scale: two cells/bacteria merge. From then on, cells merge into cooperating communities until we finish up with the vast numbers of merged cells and cell communities that make up the organs and organisms of all the species we know of today, including us. It supports Darwin’s concept of common descent but adds the all-important factor of cooperation to that of Darwin’s competition as a prime mover in the advance of evolution.

I agree. It is Margulis' contribution to evolutionary theory, which altered the original theory of simple descent by modification..