Survival of the simplest.

Randomed by Rituraj / at 1:56 PM / /

A recent article in the magazine India Today about superbugs - evolved bacteria resistant to most antibiotics, made me realise how one of the most complex creations by humans is so easily being defied by beings as simple as the bacteria. These bacteria are actually the result of a few which survived the antibiotics and passed on the gene for resistance towards the antibiotics to the offsprings.
In a way it kind of makes sense. Darwin was very right when he said "Survival of the fittest". It's just that the definition of 'fittest' might change with time. To make this clearer let us look at a simple example. Consider two machines/contraptions, one simple and one complex, that perform the same job, say Task A. If Task A changes it is more probable that the number of changes we need to make to the simpler machine will be lesser than the number of changes required in the complex one. Similarly, if we have to evolve, the process of evolution in humans will be extremely complex, difficult to achieve and time-consuming because we are so complex beings that changing one gene inevitably affects thousands of characteristics in our phenotype and in many cases the genotype as well. But the change required for evolution will be much simpler and easier to achieve for bacteria!