The role of Stress.

[foodchain]

Now there is some debate as to the role of mutation in evolution as just for fun I thought I would start this to see what replies might exist.

 

Lets take an organism, single celled for instance. When the environment is made negative in regards to its fitness the bacteria can go into a hypermutable stage in which mutation allows via population for genetic change to increase the organisms level of fitness. Now I know that this has not been tested for all life or for all bacteria for instance. One of the reasons I think that we can label it hypermutable is simply because the bacteria may not have as much of a genetic load as say a human being for instance, that far less genetic material exists for bacteria then a human being.

 

Now in general if you look at plants, the packaging of genetic material or simply the count of in relation to chromosomes is much finer then say for animals in general. One of the reasons I think this may occur is that a plant might be attuned if you will in relation to variables in the environment that can place stress on the plant in general. So overall my idea that I am trying to put forward here is relation to say a gene to the environment and basically how it relates in total via the physiology of the organism and its related behavior and how it plays out in the environment. This of course would detail that the environment in total is made visible basically by structure of an organism. Then mutations if you will play out via population genetics over a period of time in relation to adaptation basically to the environment, or environmental recognition in order to achieve fitness. I think then the more stable basically a population becomes in regards to a niche the less stress will be applied overall and thus evolution slows down.

 

Now this could be looked at in a couple of ways, such as a high stress environment or a low stress environment could come off in different regards to biology of an organism. Such as with sea vent communities. The environment might be so acute, vs a more broad environment in which environmental variables are rather fuzzy for instance. Then of course this would also interrelate between species, in which a mutation has to be able to "click" in a great many regards to the rest of the biology to the organism, in which we can find a great many times that a mutation has the ability more often then not to be deleterious rather then helpful, but again all of such is based on either the biology of the life form staying stable enough to support required functions internally, which in itself applies to the environment greatly.

 

So overall basically I am asking to look at the organism itself as an environment, and changes to that environment correlate to the surrounding environment, such as food, temperature, or a rocky mountain in which something might have to survive on.

 

If you look at changes in that regard, accumulated via time within a population I think it could make some sense. I think this also could correlate in which a sexual reproduction barrier might come into effect, and such would basically be of course traceable if it exists at all. Basically take an organism, and its constantly flowing physiochemical reality in relation to the environment over population biology in regards to environmental fitness via mutation, but on a more molecular level, or cellular level even in how the biology of a life form itself interrelates over the total of the organism and its fitness or ability to survive a giving environment.

 

I hope I can get some reply as this is an idea of mine I might want to work into a hypothesis someday as in relation to what I am doing in college. I have not used any real big words such as horizontal shift of genes from pro to eukaryotes or anything because simply at this point its not needed at all, and after all I am still very much a student that knows close to nothing, and in regards to this board data I could get from other people could save me a lot fo time, such as if I am looking at a dead end but just cant see it yet;)