Do Bacteria Grow Old?
Life cannot mutate for
millions of years: a major
challenge to old-age claims
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
When reading literature on the origin of living organisms, it is commonly stated that life has existed on the earth for many millions of years. For example, a teaching resource from the Smithsonian claims that
Evidence of microbes was … preserved in the hard structures (“stromatolites”) they made, which date to 3.5 billion years ago… the first animals, which DNA evidence suggests evolved around 800 million years ago….. Sponges were among the earliest animals [to evolve]….. sponges are preserved in rocks as old as 700 million years, [and] molecular evidence points to sponges developing even earlier.[1]
Ionizing Radiation vs Millions of Years
The problem with these claims of great age in the range of hundreds of millions of years is that omnipresent background radiation damages DNA. The National Research Council wrote about this in 1990:
“Ionizing radiation damages the genetic material in reproductive cells and results in mutations that are transmitted from generation to generation…. radiation has been found to be mutagenic in all organisms studied so far.[2]
The annual average effective dose from natural background ionizing radiation is approximately 2.4 millisieverts (mSv) worldwide. Although this is a relatively small amount of radiation, after 50 or 60 years it can cause cancer and damage to DNA and organelles in cells. After millions years we would expect that the DNA would have largely deteriorated.
Major sources of ionizing radiation include cosmic rays (alpha, beta, gamma, and neutron radiation and x-rays) and radioisotopes, including polonium-210, carbon-14, iodine-131, and potassium-40. Ionizing radiation knocks electrons out of atoms, damaging the molecules in cells. Knocking electrons out of their atomic orbital shells alters the electron/proton balance, and also potentially damages the cell structure, often killing it.
DNA is especially susceptible to damage from ionizing radiation. It directly affects the DNA structure by causing DNA breaks, particularly double-strand breaks (DSBs), wherein both strands of the double helix break apart. This is the most lethal kind of damage to cells.[3] Radiation also causes formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that damage DNA, proteins and organelles. Cells must constantly try to repair these kinds of damage but are not always successful.
A Proposal to Avoid the Accumulation of Mutations
In 2020, Science Magazine discovered an unusual way that some microbes seemed to survive the onslaught of mutations: they go dormant under the sea floor. Certain bacteria apparently remained in a state of suspended animation for eons. The article by Elizabeth Pennisi claimed that they remained alive for 100 million years and are still alive! They were found as deep as 5,700 meters below sea level.
Researchers extracted small clay samples from the centers of drill cores. They added acetate and ammonium that contained heavy isotopes of nitrogen and carbon that could be detected in living microbes. When retrieved and brought into a lab and fed, they began to multiply. These microbes, although oxygen-loving species, somehow were able to exist on the small amount of gas that diffuses from the ocean surface deep into the seabed.[4] But could they have resisted the accumulation of mutations for a hundred million years?
Do Bacteria Age?
Vilhelmiina Haavisto from ETH Zurich wrote an interesting article for the American Society for Microbiology on 16 Sept 2024 titled, “Do bacteria age?” Aging, she said, occurs at the molecular level:
As organisms age, their cells accumulate damage that impairs functioning. Molecular damage is implicated in many age-related conditions in humans and is equally relevant for single-celled organisms. While they may not ‘look’ their age, bacteria feel the passage of time too.[5]
Even microbes feel the stress of aging, she said.
bacteria are an interesting system in which to study the molecular mechanisms that contribute to age-related decline. Their rapid and robust growth means we can observe many generations in a relatively short experiment and test the effects of all kinds of environmental and genetic factors on the complex process of aging.[6]
E. coli bacteria commonly found in the gut. From Wikimedia Commons.
An analysis of bacteria revealed that aging can be detected in a matter of days. Scientists have documented that
Escherichia coli actually exhibits differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ in parent and offspring cells, respectively. By following dividing cells with a microscope, the researchers could show that the older cells’ growth rate and offspring production decline over time, and that they die more frequently than their younger offspring cells. Thus, despite looking the same, the cells undergo divisions that leave them functionally asymmetric, causing cells to age over time.[7]
Nothing can resist the incessant accumulation of mutations, she said.
Like any kind of cell, E. coli cells accumulate mutations throughout their lifetimes. Some of these mutations may be nonlethal but still negatively impact the cell’s fitness, for example, causing an important protein to lose its function.[8]
Staphylococcus aureus, the bacteria commonly found on the human skin. From Wikimedia Commons.
Bacteria do have mechanisms that can compensate for the mutational damage, but only at a cost:
researchers analyzed the effects of over 60 different nonlethal loss-of-function mutations in E. coli, focusing on mutants with non-functional ATP synthases, large protein complexes that allow cells to generate energy in the form of ATP. These mutants were found to increase their metabolic activity to compensate for the mutation, which comes at a cost—they grow slower, and some enter a purgatory-like, ‘postreplicative’ state faster than non-mutants, especially if their surroundings are nutrient-poor.[9]
Do Mutations Help Evolution?
The major damage to DNA caused by mutations was recognized decades ago. Leading evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote back in 1951 that
A majority of mutations, both those arising in the laboratories and those stored in natural populations, produce deteriorations of viability, hereditary disease and monstrosities. Such changes it would seem, can hardly serve as evolutionary building blocks.[10]
If this can be observed in the laboratory in a few years or less, after eons it would be expected to produce major DNA damage, causing extinction of the species. Author John Henry Egan wrote in 2009 that
Mutations are almost never beneficial to a species, and most of the time mutations are dealt with harshly by nature: That is to say; natural selection weeds them out.[11]
And yet evolutionists build their entire theory of progress on mutations.
Summary
Well-documented facts about aging and DNA damage from spontaneous mutations and background radiation create challenges to the belief that life has survived on earth for millions of years. Even claims of many thousands of years of a genetic lineage become very questionable. Bacteria could not have been accumulating mutations for millions of years; they would have become extinct long before this time. The fact is “Time waits for no one, not even bacteria…. Far from immortal beings beyond the reaches of aging” they age like all living organisms.[12]
References
[1] Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, “Early life on Earth – Animal origins,” https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/early-life-earth-animal-origins#. 2024.
[2] National Research Council (US) Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR V), Chapter 2: “Health Effects of Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation,” National Academies Press (US):Washington, D.C., 1990.
[3] Borrego-Soto, G., et al., “Ionizing radiation-induced DNA injury and damage detection in patients with breast cancer,” Genetics and Molecular Biology 38(4):420–432, October-December 2015.
[4] Pennisi, E., “Scientists pull living microbes, possibly 100 million years old, from beneath the sea,” Science https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-pull-living-microbes-100-million-years-beneath-sea, 28 July 2020.
[5] Haavisto, V., “Do bacteria age?” American Society for Microbiology,
https://asm.org/Articles/2024/September/Do-Bacteria-Age, 16 September 2024. Bold added.
[6] Haavisto, 2024.
[7] Haavisto, 2024.
[8] Haavisto, 2024.
[9] Haavisto, 2024.
[10] Dobzhansky, Theodosius. Genetics and the Origin of Species, New York: Columbia University Press. 1951
[11] Egan, John Henry. 6 Million and Counting: Darwin, Hitler and Genocide. The Darwinian Crisis in America. Baton Rouge, LA: Third Millennium Press. 2009. P. 46.
[12] Haavisto, 2024.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.