How could an alternate phenotype be "hidden" in a single cell?
The same way that it is hidden in animal species. Bacteria, just like animals, can change gene expression in response to a changing environment. They can alter their phenotype in response to physical cues just like animals do.
Taq, this sounds like a completely other theory of evolution than I'm familiar with.
The WAY I understand animals to "change gene expression in response to a changing environment" is by the reproductive selection of alleles that are best fitted to the new environment which can mean those not fitted have to die out before reproductive age, and all this is supposed to be more or less random. You keep talking as if there were some sort of PURPOSIVE or teleological ability to change the phenotype on demand that I always thought was rejected as a misunderstanding of how evolution works. All the processes are supposed to be random. If nonadaptive types die out before reproduction, then the alleles that are favored by the environment that are reproductively successful will have the opportunity to be expressed in greater and greater numbers until they come to characterize the population.
This is possible in multi-celled sexually reproducing animals that possess the "hidden phenotypes" for such adaptations, probably most often in the form of recessive alleles, perhaps for more than one gene, or perhaps dominant alleles have to work together with other genes to come to expression or something like that. In any case you have to have a situation that allows the adaptive alleles to find opportunity for expression which is usually because the nonadapative individuals aren't reproducing as much.
Isn't something like that the usual idea?
How a single cell could manage such a feat I have no idea. It WOULD have to change in response to the environment in some much more direct way it seems to me.
If you don't jmean to be implying something so directly teleological maybe it would help if you reworded it.
I suppose given the description I'd be inclined to think in terms of mutation on cue just as suggested.
So what we need to do is determine if the mutation conferring antibiotic resistance occurs before or after the bacteria are exposed to antibiotics, correct?
Hm. OK I guess. But even so it's hard to imagine that mutations that save the creature from death just turn up so fortuitously, whether right before or whenever they are "just in time." If before then it wouldn't be in response to the antibiotic of course, but why they should occur at all at such a convenient time is still rather mystifying. It seems to violate the rule of randomness. AND the other "rule" that I thought says that beneficial mutations don't occur all thjat FREQUENTLY.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.