There is a common belief that evolution is very slow and change doesn't occur in genes very often in nature.

(Just two days I was told this is the reason that GMOs are dangerous.)

Mostly people hold these beliefs without considering evidence of what happens in nature. As Roger's article illustrates, genes evolve in many ways: some are very conservative and others very radical. Some actually have built in devices to change very rapidly, such as repetitive DNA regions, where the repetetetive regions tends to change rapidly. A good illustation of nature's exploitation of repeats is a gene controlling fruitfly mating song frequency, studied by scientists Hall and Kyriacou and beautifully explained in a book by Christopher Wills, The Runaway Brain, p223.

In this gene, rapid genetic change fine tunes the clock controllolling the song's pitch.

Others have even more intricate machines to generate rapid genetic change, as in our immune system where antibody defences rely on rapid DNA change to defend against infection.The genes doing this are RAG1 and RAG2 and at least one of these was borrowed from bacteria millions of years ago. Thank goodness we have rapid genetic change, because parasites have even more rapidly evolving.

My point is that rapid genetic change is a fact of life, and it's a fact of germs' lives too.

As far as cooking, last week I has a raw oyster. As it went down, all I could think of was the risk of infection from bacteria and viruses. No doubt about it, cooked food was a new force in shaping our survivival from infectious disease, and this is one of the strongest selection pressures in evolution. Maybe even a reason why we are sexexexual beings!

Sorry for the repetition errors.
GMO Pundit
gmopundit.blogspot.com

Climate change will be a very big factor in natural selection. Look at the high skin cancer rates around North Queensland for example – are white European descendents really supposed to live in such places?

Fickle

Your obesity vs sex-drive theory sounds reasonable. But in the real world this logic is lost. Have you noticed the number of overweight women wandering around shopping centres with babies or annoying sprogs attached to them? Or the number of overweight couples with kids compared to non-overweight people?

My theory is that overweight people, who have indicated a lack of interest in physical pursuits, have further limited their options in life by becoming fat and are thus more likely to breed. They seek out others of their type. Whereas trim athletic people have all sorts of options other than being tied down by kids.

Maybe the fat are destined to outbreed the non-fat, and rule the world

Ludwig, shame we do not have video cam here, you could show us your trim taunt & slim figure. Diets can mess up your metabolism, so eat a balanced of foods, both raw and cooked, and stop worrying, because worry is what kills us in the end.

It is a pity ELIDA that we don’t have webcam.

I would love to show my trim taut slim figure, maintained through a balanced eating regime and a rigorous exercise regime. I’m proud of it, in my late 40s.

I agree, we have to be careful with diets. Eat cooked and raw foods, and for goodness sake stop stressing.

But you have made no comment about my views on obesity vs sex-drive.

Well, then, I will. It seems both the volume of ejaculate and its sperm content are higher in sex acts with fat women than with their thinner counterparts (Baker, R., Sperm Wars, London, Fourth Estate, 1996). It's another example of biology failing to keep pace wih society. The willie continues to regard fatness as fitness. A reasonable supposition in the Stone Age, but totally erroneous in non-hunter/gatherer societies.