So, the post title is clearly designed to pump up pageviews, but those of you who have come here hoping to see photos of me with dollar bills hanging out of my G-string are going to be sadly disappointed. The good news is the money you’ll save having your corneas scraped.
This post is actually about the evolution of sex, or “recombination,” as the biologists like to call it. The question is, why does sex exist? Or, at a genetic level, why would an organism do something that passes on only half of its genes (by mating with something that donates another half), rather than simply making a genetic copy of itself. This is often referred to as the “two-fold cost of sex.” Presumably, there must be an evolutionary benefit to sex that is great enough to overcome this two-fold cost.
As with everything in evolutionary biology, there are an enormous number of theories that have been proposed to explain the evolution of sex, but there are two major arguments. One is that sex allows beneficial mutations that arise on different backgrounds to be recombined onto a single genetic background. This allows adaptive evolution to occur at a faster rate. The other (which is really sort of another side of the same coin) is that sex permits more efficient purging of deleterious mutations.
Let me use an analogy that requires us to take a walk down memory lane. You kids may not know this, but a long time ago, music came on albums, which contained a bunch of songs. The problem with the album system was that most bands would put out one good song, and then fill the rest of their album up with crap. So, to get a collection of good songs, you had to buy a whole bunch of other songs that you didn’t actually want. Sure, you could buy the 45, but who did that, seriously?
So, in this analogy, the first theory, the one about beneficial mutations, is like how you would take all of your albums and put the best songs together on a mix tape that you give to a girl you’re trying to impress. Yes, back then, this was done non-ironically by people who were not hipsters. She would then listen to the first few songs out of a sense of politeness, make some awkward comment about how knowledgeable you are, and then mysteriously change her phone number.
One of the great things about the advent of mp3s and digital music sales is that it is easier to hide your embarrassing musical taste. It used to be that your friends would always pull out your Night Ranger album and make fun of you. Now you can rock out to Ke$ha and just close your computer when someone knocks on your office door.
Also, and more relevantly, it is easier and more natural now to buy individual songs. So, you don’t ever wind up owning a whole pile of non-I’m-Gonna-Be-(500-Miles) Proclaimers songs. Music has undergone a transition to where it is more like our second theory, where recombination permits the elimination (through failure to purchase) of deleterious mu(sic)tations.
I’d write more, but there’s a pile of cash on the dresser that I need to count.