Genes, Antibiotic Resistance and Sickle Cell Anaemia (non-random processes)

- Mutations are random events, so most of them are harmful (they make an organism less well-
adapted to their environments).
Some mutations are neutral (e.g. silent mutations).
Some confer selective advantages to the organism that has them.
- Organisms with selective advantages are more likely to survive (e.g. less predation) and
thus reproduce. They have greater fitness. Over many generations since the advantageous
alleles have a better chance of survival, populations gradually change and adapt to the
environment.
- Penicillin was one of the first antibiotic (derived from a fungus) used. It prevented the formation
of bacterial cell walls and thus killed them.
However, a strain of Staphylococcus aureus got resistance to penicillin due to the presence of
an enzyme called penicillinase which inactivated the antibiotic.
- At first, there was probably only one bacterium with this mutation. However, since bacteria
have only a single loop of DNA and one copy goes to each gene a mutant allele has an
immediate effect on their phenotype conferring a great selective advantage.
- With the penicillin acting as a selective pressure, the bacteria without the mutation died and
the drug resistant bacteria rapidly reproduced by binary fission.
- Drug resistance is also passed on in bacteria through plasmids (horizontal transmission).
- Thus, the more antibiotics are used, the more resistant bacteria will become.

- Industrial melanism describes the way in which the peppered moth, Biston betularia, population
in the UK went from speckled (pale) to black due to the loss of white lichens on trees. The pale
moths were better camouflaged against the lichen background and when the lichens died due to
sulfur dioxide pollution, the dark phenotype gained the selective advantage.
The mutation coding for dark wings was not caused by the pollution. The phenotype was
simply favoured by natural selection after the lichens died.

- Sickle cell anaemia is an example of stabilising selection.

 Even though being homozygous for sickle cell causes an often fatal disease, decreasing the
chance of survival and reproduction, many have the allele for sickle cell anaemia in many
African countries.
These countries are where malaria (Plasmodium) is endemic.
People with the sickle cell allele are less likely to suffer from malaria. This gives them a
selective advantage over others in countries where malaria is endemic.
So both types of homozygosity (for the normal allele and the sickle cell allele) are selected
against. One causes sickle cell anaemia and the other allows one to contract malaria.
Heterozygotes have a selective advantage. Thus, the sickle cell gene is not lost.
In countries without malaria, the sickle cell allele has been almost completely removed from
the population.