Unfortunately, the falsifying experiment has been done many times, including once by yours truly. You start with a monoclonal culture - that is, all the bacteria are descended by asexual reproduction from a single bacterium. You expose the culture to a mutagen, and then look for resistance. The original number of antibiotic resistant bacteria was zero. The culture evolved into a fully resistant population.
Prof,
If the resistance to antibiotics was not already present the entire culture would die. By introducing antibiotics you are creating a catastrophic event. Even viruses such as HIV have had drug resistant strains before drug therapy even began. This is not to say that bacterial mutations cannot happen but they are ‘usually’ a degenerative change as in the loss of a control gene that may cause resistance to penicillin by producing excessive amounts of penicillinase. Even beneficial plasmid transfer must be existent.
Anyway, this is not a “selectively adapted response” to man-made drugs and I hope this is not what you’re implying…
I can't argue with that.
I found this:
New features require new variations. In the modern version of Darwin's theory, these come from DNA mutations. Most DNA mutations are harmful and are thus eliminated by natural selection. A few, however, are advantageous -- such as mutations that increase antibiotic resistance in bacteria and pesticide resistance in plants and animals. Antibiotic and pesticide resistance are often cited as evidence that DNA mutations provide the raw materials for evolution, but they affect only chemical processes. Major evolutionary changes would require mutations that produce advantageous anatomical changes as well.