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What is evolution?

Is it adding features? (to use the software lingo)

Or is it subtracting ones that have no real benefit, striving toward greater efficiency?

Like terse lines of code in a concise, well-written computer program, every bacterial gene seems to exist for one or more reasons. There is no bloat.

I'm biased, but to me bacteria, chloroplasts and mitochondria are life's most amazing machines and the tasks they perform are ultimately life's most important ones.

Thanks Dr. Margulis for the great thoughts.

[eru]

Stephen Jay Gould would probably argue that most changes in evolution are just neutral drifts.