Gene-altered flies testify to global warming

[TimeTraveler]

An organism that can rapidly change its genetics to match enivornmental change will of course go through genetic change to adapt to a changing environment.

I imagine any temperature fluctuation over a handful of years would be mirrored in the genes of a critter that hatches and reproduces in the same week.

Yeah but humans don't have this ability right?

 

[CharonZ]

It might not be a wholly global influence. It might be an interaction with genes that already exist in the organism and the environment. For all we know, there is a built-in negative reinforcement mechanism that does this automatically.

This actually does not exclude a global influence, does it? The point of the paper was that there were genetic changes (inversions) not behavioural changes which coincide with temperature gradients.
So even if we assume that there is a specific mechanism that activates the inversion by heat it, the spread of these inversions again point to a change in the climatic situation.

All of it has a function, we just don't know that function yet for all sequences of pairs.

While this is possible I wouldn't expect it. Of course a lot these stretches are likely to have still obscure functions, but even in highly curated genomes, as found in bacteria, you will see for instance defunct transposases and other partial or otherwise inactive enzymes. So there is still a chance of accumulation of sequences that have no direct functions. How much this is, however, remains to be seen.

 

[Roman]

You know, I think my bio prof was one of the researchers on this project.

Yeah but humans don't have this ability right?

The ability to go from embryo to fertile adult in 7 days? No, no they don't
You're awfully astute, isn't you?
Or are you going to suggest that humans will be unable to genetically adapt rapidly enough to a changing environment?