Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Fish Evolve Immunity To Toxic Sludge

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-does-not-kill-me dept.

RedEaredSlider writes "Fish in the Hudson River and the harbor in New Bedford, Mass., have evolved resistance to PCBs. In the Hudson, a species of tomcod has evolved a way for a very specific protein to simply not bind to PCBs, nearly eliminating the toxicity. In New Bedford, the Atlantic killifish has proteins that bind to the toxin (just as they do in mammals) but the fish aren't affected despite high levels of PCBs in their cells. Why the killifish survive is a mystery."

1 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Re:You make yourself look silly when... by Spad · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Repeat after me: "Evolution does not work that way".

    Evolution isn't something that magically allows plants and animals to adapt to a specific set of circumstances, that is an entirely random process. This mutation probably happened decades or centuries ago (or possibly even *due* to the PCBs, which would be ironic but difficult to prove) and has now, as you've said, been brought to prominence because all the fish without it have died off due to the high levels of PCBs in the water.

    The fish *have* evolved immunity to the toxic sludge, but it's not a causative statement and hopefully wasn't intended as such.