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A better title would be "How Caffeine-producing Plants Evolved to Survive and Help People Wake Up". Caffeine itself is just a substance, it's hard to say it evo
by cesarbs 12y ago
A better title would be "How Caffeine-producing Plants Evolved to Survive and Help People Wake Up". Caffeine itself is just a substance, it's hard to say it evolved by itself.
- Amarok 12y agoCaffeine appeared when plants started producing it, however it must have evolved from a similar molecule. I guess it makes more sense to talk about evolution of larger molecules like proteins, but the title isn't completely wrong.
- x1798DE 12y agoI'm not sure there's a meaningful distinction there. Caffeine is the (current) end product of an evolutionary process. If we went out and killed every caffeine-producing plant in existence today but continued to synthesize caffeine ourselves, caffeine would still be a product of evolution and would still exist, despite the fact that its "reproduction strategy" has changed from "biosynthesis by plants" to "industrial synthesis by humans", and that its continued existence is mediated by memes, not genes.