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Re: [SPAM] RE: [RC] weed free - Sisu West Ranch"...There's actually a really interesting exception to this..."Not really. Bacteria have a bunch of things going for them when it comes to toxic chemical removal. 1. Short generation time. The population doubles under good conditions in 30 minutes. Evolution can go a lot faster than when dealing with larger plants and animals. 2. Genetics evolved specifically to eat and detoxify chemicals. Amongst themselves, they have been waging chemical warfare for a couple of billion years. Our basic source of antibiotics ( That is chemicals that kill bacteria) is from other bacteria and fungi. 3. Concentration gradient. If a bug or animal decides to eat a poisonous plant, they eat the whole leaf and get a massive dose. Also the easiest response, for them, is to recognize the "bad" taste and move and graze on a different plant. Horses, unless very confined or hungry, do this all the time with many toxic plants. A colony of bacteria, which has real trouble moving a significant distance, can happily live on the edge of a toxic spill, where there is just a low concentration of the material. After a few years of evolution (remember the 30 minute generation time) they can happily eat the bad stuff in much higher concentration. My first wife did a senior thesis on this back in '63. She prepared agar plates that had a gradient of various antibiotics from one side to the other. She then streaked normal bacteria across them. You could see a line where the concentration was enough to stop their growth. Colonies near this line were then streaked over another plate, with a higher maximum concentration of chemical. In a few weeks she had developed her own strains of bacteria that were completely resistant to the antibiotics. A good example of how evolution works. If she had just put the original bacteria on the plates she used at the end, not one would have grown. Ed Ed & Wendy Hauser 2994 Mittower Road Victor, MT 59875 (406) 642-9640 ranch(at)sisuwest(dot)us =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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