From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor - PM
Date: 03 May 05 - 06:36 PM

If I may be so bold, ALSO Tripe

The era that Woese is talking about is presumed to have been very early, before most "species" appeared, and hasn't been much discussed, but it's not entirely "Tripe" when one considers that a few bacteria who have developed immunity to an antibiotic, when placed with other bacteria who are not resistant, have been shown to "transmit" the resistance to others in the colony. Sort of an "evolution by infection," in a process that has been likened to transmission of a disease. All bacteria in the colony who are "infected" with the new resistance will pass it on to their "succeeding generations." It is not unreasonable to suppose that mechanisms like this may have played a significant role in evolution of the earliest life – and/or near-life – forms, and may still operate in primitive forms now.

In simple life-forms, inheritence by reproduction is NOT a requirement for the expression of new life-form characteristics, or for the spreading of a "new" characteristic throughout a colony.

Darwin didn't deal with lifeforms of this kind, and the Darwinian model of evolution is simple enough that many people can grasp it as something that might happen to beings like themselves. That Darwin's theories aren't the whole story just shows we may have made some additional "progress."

John