At 09:29 AM 28/06/00 -0400, "CYMM" <cymm@trinidad.net> wrote:
>BUT, there are also distinct ADVANTAGES to short life... the main ones being
>genetic adaptability because of the increased genetic mutation and
>recombination.
>That's why bacteria can run evolutionary rings around humans.
We're doing okay. We're still here, last time I looked.
Presumably that's because we're individually *not* just metazoan clones,
since our immunity defences are self-mutating and explore much of the same
search space as the mutating bacteria.
Strikes me that short-life-plus-sex are targeted at parasites rather than
bacteria or viri, remixing vulnerable components at a somewhat larger scale
from that typically defended by the immune system. (But I might be
speculating through my hat.)
Damien
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:14:43 MDT