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Evolution Biology

 

Microbiology is studied as evolution, because microbes change as they are being studied due to genes being lost under artificial conditions. Pathogens tend to become non-virulent under laboratory conditions, and they are sometimes used as “laboratory attenuated” vaccines.
 
Nadsonia fulvescens

My graduate research was on the yeast, Nadsonia fulvescens. It is an example of extreme evolution.

This yeast, Nadsonia fulvescens, is extremely informative of yeast evolution. The evolution of yeast has been a mysterious subject, because very little is known of the natural habitat of yeasts. A lot of yeast species have been only located by extracting them from the gullets of insects, and where they exist in the wild is not known. Yeasts have a lot of similarity in appearances, and very little is known about their differences beyond appearance.

Nadsonia fulvescensNadsonia evolved on tree sap. Most yeasts love tree sap, but they can’t evolve on it, because trees tend to exude sap for a short amount of time and rain washes the sap away quite often. Nadsonia adapted to the problem by forming a spore when separated from the nutrients in tree sap. To do this, it had to form a spore without nutrients being available. Forming a spore from internal reserves results in a lot of shrinkage of cell mass, which required moving the cell mass into a smaller chamber where the spore forms.

Acetate is used as a repressor of sporulation by Nadsonia fulvescens, which prevents spores from forming while nutrients are available. Maximum growth can then occur before spores are formed. When other nutrients are gone, acetate is metabolized allowing spores to form.

Nadsonia is the only yeast known to form a spore in a chamber alongside the original cell, which indicates that it is the only yeast that forms a spore without nutrients available.

Yeasts must avoid dehydration

Another species of Nadsonia clarifies a lot about the process. It’s Nadsonia elongata. The cells are about 5 times longer than cells of N. fulvescens. The difference in habitat tells the whole story of yeast evolution. N. elongata is found on Birch trees. Birch doesn’t exude, but it has a loose bark. It means N.e. can find protection from dehydration under the loose bark, while liquid nutrients accumulate there in some form. Elongation is promoted by surface growth, as molds demonstrate. So there is a lot of surface growth for N.e. without much liquids under Birch bark.

Most scientists did not notice that yeasts do not tolerate dehydration, as molds do. Nadsonia dramatically shows the need for protection from dehydration by yeasts. N.f. had to form a spore when separated from liquid sap, and N.e. had to find protection from dehydration under loose bark.

The ability of molds to tolerate dehydration is an extremely demanding property involving highly unusual surface properties. Because of this cell surface, a small amount of organic acids will kill molds, and propionic acid or citric acid is often used as a mold inhibitor in foods.

The reason why molds are intolerant of organic acids is because they cannot pump hydrogen ions out of the cell to reduce acidity due to their unusual surface characteristics. No one knows what those surface characteristics are.

Yeasts lost the unusual surface characteristics of filamentous fungi. Since yeasts grow in sugary liquids, they didn't need to tolerate dehydration and would have rapidly lost that demanding property.

The morel mushroom

Morel MushroomWhen I began studying the morel it was extremely mysterious. It forms spores within cells on the surface (called ascospores), which only yeasts have a reason to do. Yeasts are basically single-celled, and they form spores within the cell for efficiency. Other fungi never do. So why does the morel form ascospores? I soon found that the morel has the same physiology of yeasts. This physiology is very unique and is extremely impractical for other species. It therefore meant that the morel evolved so recently from a yeast that it had not yet changed its physiology.

Physiology is resistant to change

The morel shows that morphology can evolve very easily, but physiology cannot. Morphology is counting cells in various directions, which can be easily changed in response to need. Physiology is webbed into strict relationships to extreme complexities which cannot be easily changed. For this same reason, micro-morphology cannot easily evolve, as the position of everything inside the cell is extremely important. A cell is like a multidimensional assembly line, where metabolites move a minimal amount of distance from one reaction to the next. Change the locations just slightly, and the reactants do not get where they are supposed to be. Changing the shape of the cell is changing the locations, which is extremely difficult to do.

This type of evolution, the micro-morphology of fungi, occurred hundreds of millions of years ago, and it does not so easily occur now days. Long ago, there was less specialization and less competition. These factors allowed whimsical evolution to occur. The clamp connection of molds shows this. It’s a channel from one cell to another which goes around a cell wall separating them. Why? There is not a very good reason why, but there are a lot of variations on it.

The fact that clamp connections are still around shows another major element of evolution. Unless there is a good reason for something to change, it is held in place forever after. There has to be a selective advantage for change, otherwise destructive change including bad mutations are prevented. There are at least two methods of preventing unnecessary change. One is that mutations are often cut out and repaired. The other is that proteins surround or protect areas on the chromosome where change is not supposed to occur.

An example of this resistance to change is in two dots below the front teeth on the human jaw. Those dots can be felt with the tongue. They are the remnants of hooks used by ancient fish to catch prey about 400 million years ago. Mammals evolved from ancient fish, as recent fossils show that the human wrist evolved from fish fins. The ancient hooks evolved down to two dots, and there is no selective advantage for them to evolve away further. Evolution can only see advantage or disadvantage. With no further disadvantage, the dots have been held in place for hundreds of millions of years.

Patterns In Physiology

My morel mushroom research showed an anomaly which reverted to a previous pattern in physiology. There is evidence that patterns in physiology are permanently stored and can be reused, and this occurs throughout biology.

In humans, the evidence of physiological patterns is visible in nutrition. The most obvious is in eating a raw food diet. Persons who eat a raw food diet find dramatic changes in physiology which includes fat reduction and becoming more energized. Nutritionists say the result is simply due to eating fewer calories, which is a good indication that the result has nothing to do with calories, as nutritionists are really dumb and driven by motives to conceal their stupidity by imposing their erroneous assumption in defiance of knowledge and evidence.

Considering the complexity of a raw food physiology and its dramatic break from the usual physiology, there is no doubt that it is the type of physiology developed by monkeys, and that physiology can be re-used when signaled by a raw food diet. Monkeys needed a physiology which made them extremely light and energetic for climbing trees. Humans can revert to that physiology by eating raw food.

Another type of physiology was developed by humans in eating wheat. When wheat was developed as a major agriculture product, humans were used as de facto slave labor working long hours in the fields. They had to store up a lot of fat to provide energy for 12 to 16 hours, until they could eat significantly again. So eating wheat causes humans to revert back to that type of physiology which promotes fat production.

The wheat induced physiology is very crude being developed over a short amount of time and quite recently. It causes fat production to increase but does not improve health. It's not a valuable physiological pattern like the raw food diet produces.

These physiological patterns fit into the nature of evolution, where nothing is discarded in DNA patterns. Evolution is additive only. This problem is like buying a new computer; you can't decide what to save and what to discard from the old computer, so you have to save everything, unless some obviously worthless material can be located. Nature discards nothing in evolved DNA for the same reason—anything could be needed for something.

Nutritionists are locked onto a formula which says fat equals calories consumed minus calories burned up, and therefore more exercise is needed to lose weight. Fat production is under numerous, complex control mechanisms. Persons who work outdoors find that exercise causes them to put on weight. The obvious reason why is because ancestors who did hard work did not eat very often and needed to store a lot of fat. The simple-minded assumption that there is no place for energy to go but being burned up or producing fat defies the complexity and raises the wrong questions. Forcing people to eat less and get more exercise could damage health trying to defy laws of physiology.

Morel evolution follows ice age cycles

The age of the morel mushroom is highly visible in its characteristics and its ecology being locked into the cycle of ice ages. The morel re-evolves during each ice age cycle. There are other weird mushrooms which produce ascospores, and they are assumed to always be cup fungi. The morel is called a cup fungus for that reason, even though it does not have a cup shape. Change the word cup to apothecium, and then call the pits on the surface of the morel apothecia, and abracadabra, the morel becomes a cup fungus. There certainly is a close relationship between the morel and cup fungi. The surface of the spores from the larger cup fungi are said to be a finger print for the surface of morel spores. Instead of connecting them through terminology, how about a biological connection. Various evolutionary trees show some sort of connection, never the same with modern phylogenetics. That still doesn’t explain the biology.

The biology of cup fungi is that the fleshy ascomycetes must evolve into the cup shape for survival. The morel isn’t there yet, but it must evolve into the cup shape to survive through an ice age. Since there are two large cup fungi, they apparently evolved through two ice age cycles. Surviving with ascospores is so difficult for fungi that they never go through very many ice age cycles. Ice ages have been cycling at 100 thousand year intervals. There are small molds with a cup shape which appear to be very old. But the mold-like fungi find stable micro-niches that allow them to survive for a long time.

The reason why fleshy ascomycetes must evolve into a cup shape is shown with the morel. The morel has much difficulty coping with water, rain and humidity. Since it will not tolerate dehydration, being physiologically a yeast, it can only grow in sandy soil or something similar such as mountain humus. Fine textured soil draws moisture to the surface through capillary action causing it to dry out fast. After the morel emerges, it must not dry out too fast, or spores do not completely form. It takes 3 to 5 days for spores to form. Then the morel needs to dry out, because shrinkage of tissue is needed to force the spores out of the ascus. The spores are heavy and project for much distance.

The weather is seldom ideal for allowing morels to stay hydrated for a few days and then drying. Therefore, the cup shape is an improvement in allowing different parts of the tissue to dry at different rates. Near the outer rim, the tissue dries fast, as needed during wet years. Farther down, the tissue dries slow, as needed during dry years. Obviously, this strategy is a losing battle for long term survival, where weather extremes are a certainty.

Scope and perspective are missed at universities

In studying these unusual species, a person looks back in time quite a ways and needs to consider a large part of the complexity in environmental conditions, which of course is evolution biology of the type that evaluates complexities. Laboratory scientists do not do this. They study laboratory procedures and are tied up in technical complexities which do not allow the luxury of studying removed complexities. They therefore get an awful lot wrong in drawing conclusions on natural conditions.

Morel scientists at the universities claim that the morel has a conidial stage, previously identified as the leaf mold, Costantinella cristata. Conidia are microscopic stalks with exposed spores on them—the most common way for molds to form spores. That type of evolution ended about 100 million years ago. Numerous other micro-structures are found with the leaf mold including rosettes and croziers. Tacking such structures onto the morel shows a complete absence of a concept of what the morel mushroom is, if not a complete absence of a concept of how fungi have been evolving. The basis for the false assumptions is that the leaf mold appeared when attempts were made to grow morels on compost covered with leaves.

Other scientists have never noticed that morels only grow in sandy soil and therefore follow river basins. Sand is needed, because it does not dry out through capillary action, while morel mycelium will not tolerate dehydration being physiologically still a yeast. Mycelium cannot grow on dead leaves without drying rapidly between rains. The mycelium would also have to be a decay organism to grow on leaves, while yeasts are not decay organisms. Of course, morel scientists at the universities do not know the morel evolved from a yeast, but how could they make assumption in contradiction to the biology from a basis of real science? Science is supposed to build upon established knowledge, not ignorant assumptions.

This shows the inability of laboratory scientists to go beyond their technicalities in evaluating biology in the wild. For this reason, evolution biology does not generally go beyond the study of bones or DNA to evaluate total biology and its relationship to environmental influences through time. It takes a lot of study of a lot of complexities to evaluate biology through time.

The nature of soil is missed outside agriculture

One of the critical factors is understanding soil, as biology is intricately related to the soil. Only agriculture scientists study soil, biologists do not. Even geologists who heavily study soil do not look at the biological significance but primarily the chemistry. It’s strange that they could be claiming soil was produced by acids breaking down rocks, when the acids weren't available and the only type of rocks with similar composition, the feldspars, are not so evenly distributed as soil.

There is a thin layer of clay, about one or two feet deep, that covers the entire earth except where it was washed away or covered by volcanic debris. Below the clay is ocean sediments, glacial till or shale.

It appears that shale was the closest thing to soil that formed while the earth was being created. Clay was added later when a planet exploded in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. One major bit of evidence is that the clay is layered on top of everything else, while shale goes very deep. Another bit of evidence is in the biology. Biology on land was held back until clay was layered over the surface, which occurred 541 million years ago resulting in the “Cambrian explosion of life.” Along with the clay, critical minerals were added to the surface of the earth, which allowed diversification of the biology.

In studying these subjects including starting college in agriculture, I didn’t realize that I was becoming an evolution biologists. A major reason why I became an evolution biologist is because of a huge void of information and a lot of false information in this area. I look into subjects which others are not studying or are getting wrong. This includes the largest part of the subject of natural, wild evolution which can only be studied outside of laboratories.

Wildflowers on the plains

I started photographing wildflowers with an old-style camera simply because they were pretty. The smallest wildflowers have the most complexities and beauty, but it is hard to grasp without photography. This process brought a lot of stark evolution to the surface. Prairie wildflowers are strongly shaped by visible environmental influences. The harsher the environment, the larger the differences between variants. The most visible factor acting upon the evolution of prairie wildflowers is whipping grass which strips leaves. yellow cone flowerWildflowers adapt by protecting leaves, often drawing them close to the stem and making them small and waxy. Sometimes the leaves are close to the ground, as with dandelions or cone flowers. Sometimes, the leaves are too large and heavy to be damaged, as some milkweeds. Then a variant of milkweed is found around the shoreline of lakes, where unlimited water is available, and whipping grass does not exist. Asclepias incarnataGuess what its name is: Asclepias incarnata, the incarnate milkweed. The leaves and flowers are huge and luxurious. The scent is a complex vanilla. A few feet away, surrounded by grass, is the closest relative, which is small with tiny leaves and a flower about four millimeters across.

One of the most visible elements of the evolution of wildflowers is phenotypic variation. This adaptation is also extremely noticeable in the morel mushroom. The wildflowers and mushrooms show the extent and variations in dramatic ways. Yet this phenomenon is almost unstudied in science. Most scientists do not understand the variations when they encounter them.

With the morel, phenotypic variations are so extreme that scientists usually assume there are different species involved. They miss an awful lot about evolution and ecology. There can never be similar species occupying the same environmental niche. One will always prevail against the others. The variants near each other must be phenotypic and not genotypic. Temporary mixing is found with invasive species, such as weeds, but over time, one genotype will prevail over the others.

Two Phenotypes

Grass shaped modern biology

To look a few months back in evolution is to be stuck with the other four billion years. It’s all connected. The most dramatic and important element of biological evolution was totally missed by university scientists. It’s the transition from reptilian biology to modern mammalian biology which occurred 65 billion years ago, as the dinosaurs died out. Scientists assume that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs and, ho hum, not much else happened. Most of what we see in biology happened at that time. An asteroid doesn’t do all of that. Grass does. You would probably have to study a lot of agriculture to understand what grass did 65 million years ago.

The transition began before dinosaurs died out. A recently found dinosaur fossil, called Anzu wyliei, has long legs and looks like a chicken. It would have gotten that way by walking through grass. Other dinosaurs were extremely heavy, because they had to walk through heavy brush which covered their entire ecosystem. You have to tromp through a lot of thick brush to understand that. Before Oregon was stripped of its old-growth forests, it was the perfect place to study such ecology. I spent a lot of time doing that during the seventies.

Anzu wyliei was the last known dinosaur to evolve before they were all wiped out. It means grass was significantly developed before the dinosaurs died off. If an asteroid killed the dinosaurs, it would have only been the trigger, while grass shaped the result. I think it was a volcano that triggered the die off, because volcanoes produced a longer-lasting effect than an asteroid would.

Recently, another dinosaur was found to have evolved just before dinosaurs died out. It was a flightless, winged dinosaur called Tongtianlong limosus. (Original Article: http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2016/dinosaur-casts-light-on-late-burst-of-evolution) This dinosaur would have required a lot of open space, which again indicates that grass was significantly established before dinosaurs died out. Grass would have evolved on hills, while the nonwoody brush which most dinosaurs were eating would have been located in low areas.

Grass replaced the overwhelming brush of nonwoody plants which were holding back all evolution. Biologists try to explain how and why mammals replaced dinosaurs. Mammals didn’t replace dinosaurs. Grass destroyed dinosaurs, and grass promoted mammals. Dinosaurs needed nonwoody brush for food. When grass destroyed the nonwoody brush, dinosaurs had no food. There were conifers on the hills during dinosaur years, and they were designed by the need to prevent dinosaurs from eating them. The result was the aromatic chemistry of conifers, woodiness and sharp, small leaves. After the dinosaurs were gone, broadleaf trees were possible.

Flowering plants and mammals were slowly evolving during dinosaur years, but their numbers were reduced so much that they were almost invisible in fossil evidence. After the nonwoody brush was destroyed by grass, flowering plants and mammals thrived in the grass.

This biology and evolution cover extremely broad subject matter. Professional scientists don’t study such broad subjects, because they get paid to do more specific and narrow things. Only an independent scientist wandering through a diversity of subjects can study science in such a broad way.

Terrestrial Life

Terrestrial life began shortly after the Cambrian Explosion of 541 million years ago. Why not earlier? It would have been clay covering the shale on the surface that allowed plants to move onto land. The shale would have been too hard. Also, valuable minerals were added at that time. Even the oceans were depleted of minerals through oxidation and biology. With minerals and soft clay on the land, plants moved onto land.

One of the first things terrestrial plants did was evolve modern photosynthesis. Before then, cyanobacteria were producing crude photosynthesis. They were immersed in water, which prevented photosynthesis from evolving in an efficient way. The reason is because gases do not move through water easily. So once plants moved onto land and out of the water, they could exchange gases with the environment much more easily. With rapid exchange of gases, photosynthesis became much more efficient.

This transition shows up in a phenomenon called "SPICE" (Steptoean Positive Carbon Isotope Excursion). During Cambrian times, the oxygen level got very low, and about 500 million years ago, oxygen levels went up drastically. The cause of the oxygen reduction would have been an increase in biological activity in the oceans and lakes, while cyanobacteria could not produce enough oxygen. When plants began to grow on land, they modernized photosynthesis producing larger amounts of oxygen.

This result would have been a one-time shift from an oxygen deficient biology to an oxygen abundant biology. After the shift, oxygen production through photosynthesis balances with oxygen consumption through decay.
 
Bacterial Evolution

Gram-negative bacteria evolved long before modern biology and adapted to high nitrogen nutrition, while Gram-positive bacteria evolved with modern biology (65 million years ago) and adapted to high carbohydrate nutrition.

Pseudomonas fluorescens (P.f.) is about 700 million years old in its recognizable features. Evolutionary age is not highly definable, since all species branch infinitely all the way back to pre-life chemicals. But a concept of age exists based upon recognizable characteristics that go back in evolution. P.f. has recognizable characteristics that go back that far. Its polar flagella would be that old.

P.f. evolved from vibrio bacteria which had been evolving amongst the cyanobacteria in stagnant water. As some vibrio bacteria ended up in cleaner water, they would have needed longer flagella for rapid motion causing them to evolve into P.f.

The age of the polar flagella of P.f. can be determined from the evolution of modern respiration. There are a group of rotating proteins that speed up respiration allowing animals to move faster than they could with simple diffusion supplying the energy. Those rotating proteins evolved from the polar flagella of P.f. around 600 million years ago.

The evolution of modern ATP synthesis from the rotating proteins of P. fluorescens flagella can be stated as an unquestionable fact of evolution due to the similarities and physiology. One state must evolve from the other state, no options about it. The reason is because polar flagella were free to evolve without interference; while respiration proteins could not have evolved on their own due to demanding physiology.

The physiology of respiration is locked into cell structure and requirements for energy which left no room for drastic alternatives. On top of that, the new form of respiration did not work its way into the old form of respiration. Instead it entered the cell as whole bacteria which transformed into mitochondria. This addition to cell structure allowed the new form of respiration to be added to the old form while maintaining a variety of methods of producing energy as ATP.

Since P.f. has a history of at least a billion years as a bacterium, the evidence of its age is unmistakable. Pseudomonas fluorescensA lot of evidence of age builds up over a billion years. P.f. is the most versatile bacterium in existence beating all others by a mile, except for Streptomycetes, which are in a class of their own. P.f. produces two pigments, while other bacteria which need a pigment cannot afford such a luxury. P.f. has numerous forms allowing it to adapted to several major environments. It is the best adapted bacterium to fresh water, where it produces two polar flagella. It is the best adapted bacterium to the soil (ignoring Streptomycetes), where it recycles nutrients from thawing ice. It is the best adapted bacterium for blowing in the wind, where it forms a spore-like state contaminating laboratory cultures much like mold spores.

As P.f. adapted to various environments, it branched off into all of the other Gram-negative bacteria while leaving the original state as the main stem of Gram-negative evolution. All of the diversity of Gram-negative bacteria traces back to P.f., which probably includes Escherichia coli (E. coli) which entered the intestines of animals from their beginning, which would be about 500 million years ago. Since P.f. is much older than E. coli, E. coli would have evolved from it.

Yet there is the claim by some persons that the Gram-positive bacteria are older than the Gram-negatives. Those persons do not give a credible explanation. It is widely known that P.f. goes back in some form at least a billion years. To get Gram-positives back farther would be assuming they include cyanobacteria, which is stretching the concept of Gram-positive bacteria too far. The concept of Gram-positive bacteria became highly developed while cyanobacteria were being called blue-green-algae.

Cell wall chemistry links Gram-positive bacteria to Streptomycetes. Streptomycetes began when soil decay began about 500 million years ago. Cell walls also indicate that Streptomycetes evolved from filamentous fungi, which are assumed to go back farther than any known life forms. Gram-negative bacteria are totally independent of this line, and their origins are mysterious.

Yeasts evolved from filamentous fungi, when sugary solutions became available around 50 million years ago. Yeasts and Gram-positive bacteria competed for awhile in sugary solutions indicating that Gram-positives may have begun in sugary solutions, when flowering plants began to produce sugary solutions in a significant way after the dinosaurs died out.

Fossil evidence of yeasts goes back 50 million years, but it is possible that yeasts and sugary solutions go back farther than the fossil evidence indicates.

Evolution In Sugary Solutions

The modern form of Gram-positive bacteria (apart from Streptomycetes) clearly evolved with modern biology, which began 65 million years ago with the die-out of dinosaurs. Two major indicators are the simplicity of their characteristics and their affinity for carbohydrates.

Biologists are somewhat (variably) unfamiliar with the transition that occurred 65 million years ago. They don't know that there were no storage molecules before then including starch, fats or free sugars. Circumstantially, there could have been traces of such evolution beginning in obscure locations such as flowers of rare plants, but this physiology was not spreading to other species to influence other organisms. When flowering plants began to produce sugary substances after the transition, 65 million years ago, the result was the evolution of yeasts and modern Gram-positive bacteria, as they adapted to the sugary solutions.

Modern Gram-positive bacteria have an affinity for carbohydrates, while Gram-negatives have an affinity for nitrogen containing molecules. The reason is very obvious. Before the transition 65 million years ago, Gram-negative bacteria had to destroy other cells for nutrients, and they are designed to do that. Their cell walls chew through other cells upon contact, which makes them the dread of biology. Modern Gram-positives do not do that. They feed upon readily available nutrients of the carbohydrate type which are released by dead vegetation. Some of them later became pathogens, which might not look like a vegetarian diet, but other similarities show the same origins.

Microbiologists are not aware of this difference in nutrition—affinity for carbohydrate vs. nitrogen containing molecules. Here is a major source of information which has been out of view of microbiologists: Many plants and most mushrooms protect themselves from the scourge of Gram-negative bacteria by causing Gram-positive bacteria to form on their surface. Excretion of carbohydrate would be the method of promoting Gram-positives on the surface. A highly visible example is green beans. After sitting around for awhile, they get coated with a buttery substance on their surface. It's edible and doesn't have much flavor. It would be a coating of Gram-positive bacteria, probably Bacillus cereus, though I have not tested it to find out what species it is. Microbiologists do not know what the evolutionary habitats are for B. cereus and B. subtilis, but circumstantially, those similar bacteria would have evolved on the surface of plants being promoted as protection from Gram-negative bacteria, while variants would have evolved on decaying vegetable matter.

A highly informative bit of evidence is the morel mushroom. It has no such protection having evolved from a single-celled yeast a few months ago. As the morel ages, Gram-negative bacteria invade the tissue. Persons who eat old and deteriorating morels get sick from them, as the invading Gram-negative bacteria have an endotoxin in the cells walls. That type of toxicity never occurs with other mushrooms, as they protect themselves from Gram-negative bacteria, though some of them produce their own toxin for protection against predators.

There are some very complex Gram-positive bacteria, such as Listeria, which appear to go back in evolution farther than the other Gram-positives. Listeria would have evolved from Streptomycetes, since it has a soil-adapted stage.

Streptomycetes are filamentous bacteria which are highly specialized in breaking down cellulose in soil. They have been breaking down cellulose in the soil for 450 million years or more. They would have been the evolutionary source of modern Gram-positive bacteria which evolved on carbohydrates after the biological transition 65 million years ago. Streptomycetes would have evolved from fungi, which have cell walls similar to Gram-positive bacteria. The modern Gram-positive bacteria would then have evolved from Streptomycetes when modern biology began.

A major element of the biological transition 65 million years ago was the development of flowering plants and sugary substances that they produced. Both yeasts and Gram-positive bacteria evolved on the sugary substances. The Gram-positive bacteria also fed on the yeasts, while the yeast protected themselves by excreting acetic acid and ethyl alcohol. The yeasts sort of won, but the Gram-positive bacteria diversified and adapted to other plant material.

These changes modernized biology in very dramatic ways. Not only did mammals rise up to dominate the animal world and flowering plants emerge from obscurity to dominate the plant world, the Gram-positive bacteria rose up out of the soil as Streptomycetes and moved into the plant and animal world as modern Gram-positive bacteria, first as scavengers and then as pathogens.

The Diapsid Mystery

About 300 million years ago, evolving reptiles acquired two mysterious holes on the side of their skulls called temporal fenestra. The most common explanation is that muscles attached at those points for stronger jaw motion, but some scientists question that logic.

I study recent examples of the evolution of morphology and see a recognizable pattern in drastic adaptations. Since the skull holes look like eye sockets, they would have been eye sockets at one time. As such, they would have limited vision to horizontal view creating a wide field of vision but no three dimensionality that forward view produces.

When a need arose for forward vision, perhaps in part due to predators, the eye sockets needed to move to the front of the skull. But migration of bone shape would have been a slow process. An almost instantaneous process would have been to reconstruct the eye sockets in front while leaving the previous sockets in place. This result would have been a duplicating process, which could be instantaneous, rather than a migration process, which would have been slow.

The unused sockets would not have easily disappeared in evolution, because there has to be a selective advantage in getting rid of unnecessary structures. Otherwise, mutation and change are prevented by mechanisms which protect DNA integrity.

An example with humans is two tiny bumps under the jaw bone below the front teeth. They are remnants of hooks used by fish to catch prey about 400 million years ago. Mammals evolved from ancient fish. The two small bumps evolved down to a point where there was no selective advantage in removing them further, and then the DNA preservation mechanisms locked them into place for hundreds of millions of years.

Overview

Evolution is minimalist. It promotes advantages no matter how slight. In doing that, it sacrifices one thing for a slight advantage at another thing.

Doing that was no problem early in evolution, where complexities and competition were not highly developed. Evolution could be quite spurious 200 million years ago. Some land-based dinosaurs were producing feathers for some purpose other than flight. They didn't originate the genes for that; the genes were carried to them through "horizontal gene transfer" from species which were not in their ancestral linage.

Another example is the early, filamentous fungi. They evolved complexities such as conidial shapes, which means the stalks which have spores on them. That type of evolution is not possible now days, because the doors to evolution close when complexities increase.

The process is shown by the clamp connections of filamentous fungi being produced around 200 or 300 million years ago. A clamp connection is a tube that goes around a crosswall. Various things would happen in those tubes including spore formation. Residues of clamp connections still exist, because nature will not totally discard irrelevancies when selective pressure reduces down, while DNA integrity is closely protected in areas where mutations are not needed for adaptability.

So the clamp connections show how frivolous evolution was way back then. Evolution cannot be so frivolous now days with extreme demands upon species creating unresolvable contradictions. Now days, evolution sacrifices one thing for the betterment of something more important.

One example is that zinc metabolism is so important in enhancing immunity that copper metabolism was sacrificed in adapting to the increased zinc that became available to humans. The result is that if humans take zinc they will acquire a copper shortage, unless they figure out how to take both but at different times.

Due to the toxicity of copper, the best way for humans to get copper is in red meat. Plants have very little copper. Taking copper in mineral form will oxidize food creating indigestion. Copper taken without food would get absorbed too fast and damage the liver. So if copper is taken in mineral form, it could be combined with white rice. Oxidation of starch does not produce the degree of toxicity of oxidized nitrogen containing molecules.

Evolution did not resolve the contradictions between the need for zinc and the need for copper; instead evolution picked the more important metal and promoted its metabolism over the other. In that way, evolution keeps getting more contradictory in allowing complexities to compete with each other in ways that are not adequate to meet changing demands.

All species are dying out due to an inability to adapt to drastic changes in their environments and resulting requirements for survival. All biology would become extinct in two to ten million years, even if there were no human influences, due to the inability to resolve conflicting demands with increasing complexities.

Evolution Physiology

What Scientists Don't Know

Extreme Evolution TOP     

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Extreme Evolution
 
Cambrian Explosion Of Life
 
Evolution Physiology
 
Human Evolution
 
Evolution Science Errors
 
Phenotypic Variation
 
Physiological Patterns
 
The Biology Of Prairie Wildflowers
 
How Modern Biology Began
 
The Evolution Of Mitochondria
 
P. fluorescens And Mitochondria
 
Zinc And Immunity
 
The Evolution Of E. coli
 
The Transition
 
What Scientists Don't Know
 
Morels, The Longer Story
 
Time Scale Of Evolution
 
The Physiology Problem
 
ATP Error
 
Porphyrins
 

     

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