This article focusses on bacterial evolutionary change, but the principle of what is discussed is fully applicable to all organisms including ourselves. For instance, a Neo-Darwinian explanation of bacterial evolution and other species across the whole spectrum of life would go something like this: Species evolve and eventually can become a different species via generations of changes in the DNA due to mutations (non-destructive and/or neutral mutations). The only problem is that species of bacteria never change into anything other than bacteria. And the idea that genetic mutations upon which natural selection acts is also be strongly criticised by a highly regarded scientist (micro-biologists, who contributed a highly significant theory about early microbial evolution to evolutionary biology), Professor Lynn Margulis, as seen in the following statement:

“Neo-Darwinists say that new species emerge when mutations occur and modify an organism. I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change [which] led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence” (Teresi 2011, 68)

http://discover.coverleaf.com/discovermagazine/201104?pg=68#pg683.

If it isn’t via genetic mutations, then what is driving adaptation within existing species and what is the driver of evolutionary (species) change? The answer in part, along with many other interactive processes, lays in the epigenetics. See Free e-book at ww.smashwords.com/books/view… For instance, one clincal study with bacteria (a really simple organism that should show mutations operating with selection to produce a change an adaptation) clearly, demonstrates that: “bacterial adapt to antibiotics more quickly than can be accounted for by mutations” (Janusz 2008) http://epigenome.eu/en/3,35,1110 The article is taken from the Epigenome NoE website which is a European funded project promoting excellence in science and research envolving the epigenome. The study on bacteria proposes the epigenetic explanation as it is environmentally-driven, adapting the organism’s response to stimuli (new antibiotics) by changing how the genes are expressed without changing the DNA sequence itself. We are only recently beginning to understand the epigenome as an article on Medical News Today outlines:

What is a gene? What are genes? Initially, after the Human Genome Project was completed, we thought that much of the instructions for making the proteins that make an organism was contained in a tiny part of the genome, while the rest was simply “junk” DNA, without any useful function. Later on, geneticists discovered another layer of heritable genetic data that are not held in the genome, but in the “epigenome”… In this area there are instructions on how to interpret the DNA code for the production of proteins. Some of the code for manufacturing the proteins of the epigenome was found to be hiding in junk DNA…That discovery helped us understand that the c.23,000 genes in the human genome that can be found in all the cells of the human body are expressed differently in different organs and tissues. How they are expressed depends on gene regulation instructions located in the epigenome. (Nordqvist 2013)

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/120574.php