How do bacteria change and evolve?
1 Answer
Bacteria are mostly asexual (their offspring is the same) but they can perform sexually as well. A great example of this would be bacteria-resistance where a small portion of the bacteria survive against something and the rest of the population is now evolved as well.
Explanation:
Do you ever notice how some cleaners say 99.99% clean. why not 100%? It is because there will ALWAYS be a very small portion of the population that is immune to the cleaner. They could have mutated and had a random allele be changed in their DNA.
The rest of the population will die because of the cleaner and that 0.01% of the bacteria population is still alive and immune. They will perform asexually to mass produce the same type of bacteria over and over again. The next time you use the same cleaner, it might kill only around 80% and the number drops down over and over again.
This is the bacteria adapting to their environment and evolving over time.
