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Organism Survives 100 Million Years Without Sex
zyl0x writes "The Times has an interesting article online on the discovery of a 100-million-year-old micro-organism which has survived its entire lifespan without sex." From the article "A tiny creature that has not had sex for 100 million years has overturned the theory that animals need to mate to create variety. Analysis of the jaw shapes of bdelloid rotifers, combined with genetic data, revealed that the animals have diversified under pressure of natural selection. Researchers say that their study "refutes the idea that sex is necessary for diversification into evolutionary species".
This happens on Slashdot all the time.
Move along...
It should be right at home here.
Scientists have named this new species Republicanus Typicalus.
...it's married.
It is gratifying to see an article about me, but why did they add in the irrelevant stuff about bdelloid rotifers?
Is that what you would name this micro-organism?
Previewing comments are for sissies!
While 100 million years seems like a long time, perhaps it is married and has a wife. That would explain everything.
I see they finally studied the mating habits of the married American male...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
...who read this as a single organism living for 100 million years without having sex? First part said "wow", second part made me feel like I had been out-geeked...
Great Intellect...
From the look of those mandibles, it's the foreplay that kills 'em.
actually, the main point of the story is that it has changed, has evolved. There is no reason to believe that evolution stops if there is no sex, natural selection is quite happy to use mutation as a tool for evolution, just as it does sex. The difference being that sex tends to speed the process up with different combinations of genes with most offspring.
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Who ever said sex was necessary for diversity? It just speeds it up - what's the big deal about this discovery? There are a crazy number of organisms that don't have sex and have changed a hell of a lot over time.
It was discovered wearing a ratty linux t-shirt.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Seriously however the article was very unclear. What is it that asexual organisms aren't able to do? Surely it isn't that they can't diversify into different species. After all every organism on earth is descended from the same intial life form and some organisms are still asexual hence establishing that the initial lifeform diversified into some progenitor sexual organism as well as branches that remained asexual.
My best guess as to the claim made in the article is that multi-celluar organisms require sexual reproduction to select for organism wide traits. Not sure why it would be true (maybe different cells don't have enough incentive to look out for the whole organism) but that's my best guess.
Anyway saying that the organism doesn't have sex isn't very clear. Many bacteria exchange genetic material without having sex. Such a system might let this creature gain some of the benefits of sexual selection.
Does anyone understand what this article is actually trying to say? I know it's a funny title but some info would be nice too.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Front page stories
* Dungeons & Dragons and IT
* Organism Survives 100 Million Years Without Sex
* Gifted Children Find Heavy Metal Comforting
Did anyone see suck's parody of slashdot?
http://www.suck.com/daily/99/12/13/daily.html
Doesn't seem so funny now, does it?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Of course, it had one hellashish case of masterbation blisters....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Did anyone else read that headline as "Orgasm Survives 100 Million Years Without Sex?" That'd be a pretty impressive feat!
...scientists *don't* say "that sex is necessary for diversification into evolutionary species".
Sex *does* lead to diversity *within* a species, which can be good for keeping ahead of parasites and diseases, and all the genetic duplication can help accelerate diversification. But sexual reproduction, in the absence of other sources of genetic variation, does not lead to speciation.
...but they're all female.
I actually don't see what the big f**king deal is. If you understand evolution, you probably know that natural selection does not depend on sexual reproduction. It just depends on reproduction, period. It's not as if this single, individual organism has lived 100 million years; its asexual offspring have lived that long, and any time in asexual reproduction, mutations can also occur. I repeat, IT IS NOT SPECIFIC TO SEXUAL REPRODUCTION.
I would fathom that mutation might happen more often with sexual reproduction, and thus asexual reproduction could slow the pace of evolution, but again, that's not to say it doesn't happen. Because it very surely does, as we know from the mutation of all those single-celled asexual organisms we know about. Like every disease out there. It is absolutely nonsense to claim otherwise. Bacteria multiply asexually. Protists do too. This is why diseases resist new drugs. Countless species of plants reproduce asexually. Myriad species of all these kingdoms have survived for 100 million years.
The headline might as well be, 'there has been life on Earth a long time.'
Take off every sig. For great justice.
This discovery doesn't refute anything. Sex has never been a requirement for diversification. That's just silly. Single celled organisms reproduce clonally, and there are millions of species. (they do utilize gene transfer, but that isn't the same as sexual reproduction)
Inheritable differences and selection are sufficient. Mutation is a fine source of inheritable differences. Sex allows greater rates of diversity and retention in the population of undesirable traits that are not dominant for longer, allowing them time to mutate into something useful or show up when environmental factors make them useful. Sexual reproduction is far and away the most common mode in multicellular organisms, probably because it helps the species be resilient to environmental changes. But it isn't required.
it just seemed like a 100 million years.
I had always read that sex wasn't nessaccary for diversity but it excellerates the process. It would be more of a story if the microorganism had mirrored the diversity of sex based organisms without the benefit of sex. The mutation rate is higher with sex providing for a more varied gene pool and it allows for those genes to be randomly exchanged.
I would have found "Organism Survives Without Orgasm" at least a hundred times more entertaining :)
Researchers say that their study "refutes the idea that sex is necessary for diversification into evolutionary species".
I have never even heard the idea (during a degree in genetics) that sex is necessary for diversification into species. Bacteria do not have sex (although they can share DNA through other means, such as plasmids) and yet that are incrediably diverse and continue to evolve rapidly (e.g. antibiotic resistance). Therefore, if sex were necessary for speciation we would only have one species of bacteria.
The term "evolutionary species" is also strange. All "species" are by definition "evolutionary", since that is the process by which individual species arise.
Sounds a lot like my marriage...
So how long before the Cristian Right tries to use this study as "proof" that evolution is just a hoax and has been "proven wrong" by science. Or do they ever even bother giving actual sources for their claims anymore?
welcome our abstinent 100-million year old micro-organic losers *cough* overlords.
Well, clearly sex isn't the only way to achieve diversification.
It's just more fun that way.
Two sister species were found to be living together on the body of a water louse. One of them specialised in living around the louse's legs and the other stayed close to the chest. And I thought I had a crappy dorm room.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
that this will be the longest thread on slashdot. Ever.
funny pics
I am pretty sure they are not the only organisms that reproduce asexually and still mutate. What about viruses, bacteria etc?
Original article states: "Bdelloids (the "b" is silent) reproduce through parthenogenesis, which generates offspring with essentially the same genome as their mother from unfertilized eggs. Biologists have yet to find males, hermaphrodites, or any trace of meiosis--the process that creates sex cells--challenging the long-held assumption that evolutionary success requires genetic exchange."
So, essentially as I understand, offsprings have the same genes as parent. Still, natural selection works across millions and millions of years, plenty of spacetime for genes shuffling due to radiation and whatnot, for one thing.
The purpose of sexual reproduction (mitosis) is to blend genetic traits, and thus diversify the species. However, I can think of a number of ways that genes can be modified without mitosis:
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
on when life begins. It begins at birth, by extremely well established common law. You get to vote when you are 18 years old, that is, 18 years after your birthday, you get to legally drink alcohol 21 years after your birthday, etc. Even among the "right-to-lifers," I've never met one who celebrated "conception day."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
e.g. The USA - a 2 party state. Israel - a 12+ party state.
i.e. Clumping is of expediency, not choice. Change the electoral system and left/right loses all meaning. It only has meaning in the US because American politics is one dimensional.
Deleted
I always have trouble reading about findings of "two close species". Article claims that they are too different genetically to be one species, too different ecological niches to be one species, yet dispite the differences they find it proving that they are "evolutionary related". If they are too distant then they might be created using non-evolutionary ways (aliens came, looked at the rotifer and decided to make it live in another organ of the lice). If they are similar, then what does prevent us to call asexual organisms one species?
In sexual organisms there is a clear boundary between species - productive progeny of mating between two organisms. If a couple does not produce productive progeny - male and female belong to different species, if they do - they are from the same species. That is why using asexual organisms to support pseudo-science of evolution is particularly lame: all the arguments are tautologically meaningless reducing themselves to "diversity".
About that: authors write First of all, that has been traditional view long time ago, but evolutionists have been convinced that sex is not necessary for evolution for quite some time. And you do not have to be a specialist to know that. Look at bacteria.
Second. How would you know if clades are displaying the same pattern or different pattern or any pattern, if you for sure do not know all the representatives of the clade that ever existed? For example, according to "traditional" view of evolutionists reptiles were much more diversed before 100M years ago than they are now.
It is essentially comparing diversity of two arbitrarily (which is different from randomly) selected samples. And the difference between "arbitrarily" and "randomly" is that first is biased selection (some species exist no more for all kinds of reasons).
And this is a beginning of the article.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
It's a bad idea to read "organism" as "orgasm" when you're reading out loud for a class.
I understand the point of the story quite well, which is quite different from the title BTYW, but how is this a new discovery? Bacteria have been getting along without sex (mostly, see plasmid transfer for details) for a good 4+ billion years. Is it because this is a multicellular animal? I really don't see what the fuss would be.
There's no denying it. We're getting older. There are now more jokes about wives not having sex than there are about parent's basements.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton