• Question: do you believe in evolution and why do you think its real also give an example???????????????

    Asked by bossno1 to Alexis, Dr D, Helen, Jasmine, Mario on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Andrew Devitt

      Andrew Devitt answered on 24 Jun 2013:


      I do believe in evolution and you can watch it happening.

      If you grow bacteria in a low level of antibiotic – it will kill most (but not all of them). The survivors might struggle for a while but they will eventually grow well again. Then you can increase the antibiotic treatment again….. same happens. If you keep repeating this, you are applying a selective pressure to the bacteria and you are forcing evolution….. survival of the fittest.

      Same thing happens when you try to treat cancer cells

    • Photo: Alexis Barr

      Alexis Barr answered on 24 Jun 2013:


      I do. In my field of cancer research we see evolution all the time. One of the big problems with trying to kill off cancer cells with drugs is that cancer cells evolve to become resistant to the drugs. What that means is that some cancer cells will pick up mutations in their DNA which will let them survive even when treated with drugs. Other cancer cells around them that don’t have these mutations will die leaving more space for the resistant cancer cells to take over. This is a really BIG problem in cancer treatment and one that we are working hard on trying to solve.

    • Photo: Helen Tunbridge

      Helen Tunbridge answered on 25 Jun 2013:


      Yes, definitely. You can see it in large animals and how they have developed (eg. similarities between humans and monkeys, or different kinds of fish), even down to proteins! If you look at the sequence that makes up a protein (eg. myosin, a muscle protein), in different animals there are bits of it that will be the same in LOADS of different animals, but other bits will have small differences which have come about by random variation over time.

    • Photo: Jasmine Penny

      Jasmine Penny answered on 26 Jun 2013:


      Yes I do believe in evolution! Like Helen says, you can see the similarities between humans and monkeys (who we evolved from). Actually, some of the features of our immune system began to appear when the jawed fish evolved. So there are some things in us that make us related to animals which you wouldn’t expect!

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