From conflict to collaboration

New scientific understandings in the field of evolution were outlined in a recent essay written by Carlo Bellieni along with the Mexican philosopher Lourdes Velazquez, entitled: ‘The true secret of evolution: from conflict to collaboration’. Through many examples they saw that the common understanding of evolution based on isolated randomness cannot explain all the mutations of life on earth. Evolution as it’s currently understood manages to explain the major mutations, namely those that lead to the survival of some subjects in a catastrophe. It happens to certain animal species after an environmental disaster, or to certain bacteria after the contact with an antibiotic: only those who have genetically acquired somatic traits that make them immune to the damage of the aforementioned catastrophes will survive.

But randomised evolution does not explain three types of phenomena. Firstly, the minor mutations, those that do not serve to survive but make us more adapted to the environment, for example the progressive disappearance of molar teeth in human beings. Second, the mutations that require other simultaneous mutations to perpetuate themselves; an example are the biochemical processes of a cell (just one new enzyme would be useless without the formation of another hundred at the same time that collaborate with it); another example are the mutations that lead to symbiosis (carnivorous plants that breed ants inside their flower without destroying them, while those ants produce food for the plant itself). Third, mutations that occur because a virus or bacterium gives up part of its genome to another organism, as happens between bacteria in the event of a danger due to antibiotic substances. Some new events, such as epigenetics, but also the ‘horizonal gene transfer‘ (the passage of genes from a species to another) can open to more satisfactory explanations of these phenomena. They don’t give the final answer to the question on evolution, but they open to interpretations broader than the mere ‘fight for survival’.

Epigenetics

The researchers examined the importance of epigenetics in the evolutionary process. Epigenetics is the ability of the environment to influence the DNA: the environment can block some genes that would normally be active, and this block can be hereditary for at least four generations, even if the surrounding environment changes. But recent studies have shown what was unthinkable: this process of ‘blocking’ genes can influence actual DNA mutations. How? J Gray Monroe et al, in an extensive study, showed that not all genes undergo epigenetic blockade in the same way, but some are more sensitive. They are the genes of cell reproduction and of its vital development. These genes thus become less mutable; they have less possibility of mutating. What could this indicate? That the environment epigenetically – in an afinalistic way – acts by selecting which genes have the greatest possibility of mutating, therefore the mutations will not be absolutely random but protected by the environment. This does not mean that the environment selects ‘the mutations that the environment prefers’, ie, the most useful for the environment, but it discloses something decidedly important: ‘isolated randomness’ is not the only spring that triggers the mutations: there is also a ‘collaborative randomness’, a shield with which the external environment protects certain genes from random mutations.

Naysaying Darwin?

The doubt that competition was the only driving force behind evolution has been raised by various scientists in recent years. This does not mean denying Charles Darwin, rather it means delving into his brilliant discoveries. Darwin himself wrote that some phenomena (he gave the example of the mammalian eye) were so complex and required multiple and simultaneous mutations that they could not be explained by simple isolated mutation and competition to survive.

The final message from the essay is that teaching evolution today means highlighting new horizons. The evolution of life does not come from a simple struggle for survival, but also from collaboration: the exchange of DNA between different species and the symbiosis between different life forms are a clear evidence of this.