Although, this doesn't mean you zapping someone with enough lightning and they can become the flash. The electroporation process is one way of damaging the cell just enough to make them take in foreign DNA. Think of it like poking holes in the cell and DNA got in. Whether that DNA get recombined or not depends on other processes, which might also get activated as a stress response to the damage. But it is entirely random. So the DNA coding that specific function/protein must be available in the environment first, and the cell must survive the process of getting struck by Zeus and be lucky enough to do the recombination just right to retain that piece of DNA to produce a proper mutant.
Lots of entropy here, like someone said elsewhere. But that is life. Do it enough time and maybe something fun come out of it.
While I agree with Dennett,* I don’t think agency is correctly ascribed here, unless you can find selection for locations of increased lightning incidence(!).
It’s more like “any survivors remain subject to natural selection, as did those unfortunates that did not survive”
For multi-cellular organisms the picture is completely different and it likely wouldn't matter nearly as much.
Unsurprisingly there are organisms that seem to preferentially strike (and mutate) in hospitals, but have they (yet?) selected for some special preference for, say, urban hospitals? I doubt it, though it would be cool (and probably frightening) if so. That situation would be more likely to evolve than the researcher case.
The most relevant situation would be where the environmental toxin is mutagenic. My uninformed guess is that adaptation to that environment would typically involve mechanisms to reduce susceptibility to the toxin's mutagenic effect, and, as in the case with other toxins, organisms so adapted would be out-competed in areas where the toxin is not present.
I guess we have examples in the microbes which have adapted to live in areas of high radiation, but I do not know how they fare elsewhere.
Update: D. radiodurans is an example, but it has been suggested that its tolerance is simply a side effect of a mechanism for dealing with prolonged cellular desiccation - another sort of environment where they do well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans#Evolut...
It’s also worth noting that early in earth’s history, it was geologically very active and thus resulted atmosphere with all kinds of extreme weather—including lightning storms.
I don’t know how likely spontaneous recombination is, but those two data points make it seem plausible enough that electricity may have had an important role in the development of life on earth.
If there is a natural laboratory for this, this would be it:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/some-of-you-may-die
But, to nitpicking, I guess you could say the selection came after the gene got recombined. Surviving the zap and was lucky enough to do the recombination still do nothing. The effect of the recombination, i.e. the expression of the foreign gene, is the interesting part. If it confers an advantageous trait to the mutant, that mutant get selected for in the game of life. If it doesn't, which is most often the case, it is selected against, and would be quickly removed from the genetic pool.
We do this selection quite often in the lab so perhaps it unconsciously leaked out in my phrasing.
It would perhaps be much worse for ocean-dwellers than for fresh-water life due to the conductivity differences.
I would love to see a computer simulation of this, e.g., for each type of aquatic ecosystem, what would be the recombination sweet-spot or optimal conditions for genetic recombination within a lightning-affected area.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment
The fewer cells comprising the organism/thing the more likely it is to have any likelihood of a meaningful result. Which is not much at best because like the most fundamental capability of a living cell/organism is keeping out foreign DNA and not integrating and reproducing it if some does get in. So the approach is to do it on a massive scale and design in some easy way of recognizing/selecting for the successful ones i.e. if it happens in nature it's vanishingly unlikely that the zapped genotype lasts for more then a generation, just like with any other random mutation.
The likelihood of a zapped-in chunk being a major evolutionary advantage could be higher than that caused by an environmental factor, just because it can transfer big chunks of something that was once useful to someone else, versus the more point ish mutations caused by radiation etc.
In relation to the eels/lightning, the mechanism is totally plausible but the question should be more how meaningful is it in comparison to all the other ways DNA is transferred like viruses/bacteria/fungus, radiation, bad luck, etc. Generally other unicellular critters are somewhat better at sneaking in weird DNA than environmental factors because it's their trained profession or something
So if I'm reading this correctly, and Atsuo Lida is correct, then lightning zapping a water source which is teaming with life can trigger genetic recombination[0], and by extension, possibly catalyse evolution (at least sometimes)?
I do love the idea, and am aware that I have no idea what I'm talking about here.
[0] https://www.palomar.edu/anthro/synthetic/synth_7.htm#:~:text....