<p>Accelerating</a> Future Risk From Engineered Microorganisms, Strategies for Evolutionary Dominance</p>
<p>wow
wow
wow</p>
<p>even though complex eukaryotes are more interesting as individuals than simple eukaryotes or prokaryotes, the sheer DIVERSITY of prokaryotes/simple eukaroytes is FAR more interesting than the diversity of complex eukaryotes. It's really so amazing. And we know SO LITTLE about the simple eukaryotes. They even have a form of intelligence (though not in the "conscious" form of intelligence) - they communicate with each other through quorum sensing; it's amazing. i mean, ants are superorganisms (after all, the genetics of kin selection means that individual ants still end up passing most of their genes through the defense of their supercolony), but when you think of it, asexually reproducing bacteria (given the assumption of surrounding bacteria with near-identical genomes) can ALSO be considered superorganisms (and thus it is evolutionarily advantageous for SOME bacteria to die for other bacteria with almost identical genetic material). Of course lack of genetic diversity is grounds for disaster, so the assumption of "surrounding bacteria with near-identical genomes" is not universally true; however, it may be LOCALLY true. And just as William Hamilton predicted superorganisms through the mathematics of kin selection in Hymenoptera, well, bacteria have even MORE opportunities to explore local optima (because they reproduce so quickly and mutate so quickly) and a theoretical prediction is even more likely to land up with an experimental result in some bacterial colonies somewhere.</p>
<p>==
plus, viruses are AMAZING too. Human DNA is at least 8% viral IIRC, and probably higher. We're just beginning to explore viral DNA, and quite frankly, viral DNA is the BEST example of Dawkins' "selfish gene" model at work (same for the extended phenotype too, really). While the examples he gave in his book seemed to be somewhat restricted to special cases, the examples given by VIRUSES are literally extremely convincing in favor of his "selfish gene" model. Some of the new examples are in one of the recent books of Robert Trivers IIRC.</p>