> > Is conjugation that rare? I was on a lecture about how plasmids evolve
> > (they are selfish replicators, after all, and do their best to
> > maximize their fitness) and I got the impression they are sometimes
> > almost littering the cellular environment.
>
> It may be more common than was portrayed in my Biochemistry book and
> indicated by the professors I've had but it is biological "standard wisdom"
> at least that bacteria usually reproduce asexually by mitotic division.
Yes, nobody denies that. But I got the impression that plasmid
exchanges are fairly common (at least so common that a beneficial gene
such as antibiotics resistance can spread quite quickly through the
population if needed).
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y