Bill Nye: Sex fascinates me I will say.
As a scientist or a scientific investigator
– as a science educator it fascinates me
but as a guy it fascinates me.
No one’s exactly sure what the first organisms
were that had sex.
But there’s very reasonable theories about
it and very reasonable theories about why
it persists, why it’s so popular in nature.
So you can observe bacteria exchanging DNA
through these little pipes, these pili.
And they exchange DNA and they carry on and
you can imagine one of them exchanging big
pieces of DNA slowly and another on exchanging
small pieces of DNA quickly.
And so they would then – it is reasonable
that two different versions of the same strand
of DNA, the same genes came to be.
One would become the egg and the other would
become the seed or the sperm.
And it’s not hard to imagine after you observe
these things under a microscope, exchanging
DNA.
But then why would it persist?
Why wouldn’t other bacterial species, let’s
say in the case of bacteria, why wouldn’t
other bacteria outcompete the slow exchange,
fast exchange versions just by budding off
in the traditional split yourself in half
type of binary bacterial reproduction.
Well apparently your biggest enemy is not
lions and tigers and bears which, of course,
can be trouble – don’t get me wrong.
Your biggest enemy is germs and parasites.
So apparently by having sex organisms are
able to come up with a new mixture of genes,
a new combination of genes, a new strand of
DNA that the germs and parasites are not able
to disable as readily, are not able to hijack
as easily.
So this is such an important thing and such
a valuable innovation that well you just think
of all the love songs that are written every
five minutes but just look at dandelions and
the lilies of the field.
I might add – I mentioned this in the book
– I think the guys who wrote the Bible just
kind of missed that.
The lilies in the field go to a lot of trouble
to make flowers.
It’s a lot of work and they don’t spin,
they don’t toil but actually they’re working
pretty hard.
And they do that to get a new mix of genes
because plants have viruses and parasites
as much as the next organism.
So it’s really quite an insight.
And the guy who coined this theory is just
fabulous.
The theory of the Red Queen.
And so Alice in Wonderland is now in Through
the Looking Glass in the next book and she
meets the Red Queen.
And the Red Queen is some sort of chess piece
person and she’s able to – or she does
slide around on the chess board of life somehow.
And when you’re talking with her you have
to run so Alice says to the Red Queen, you
know, where I come from if you run all day
you end up somewhere else.
And the Red Queen says well that seems like
a very – with a British accent I presume
– it seems like a very slow sort of country.
And that’s what evolution is like.
If you’re not running all the time you fall
off the treadmill of life and your genes disappear.
So it’s quite an insight – it’s just
a cool expression, the theory of the Red Queen.
And it’s an aspect of evolution that Darwin
speculated about but it wasn’t really figured
out until a century later.
So it’s really something.
