Nanomachines?

[Dr.Henry_Killinger]

Scoobes said:

Well, speciation would take longer than thousands of years. Maybe hundreds of thousands of years, but even then, if the environment of each colony is tightly controlled and identical, the selection pressures will also be the same effectively reducing the chances of speciation. The need for diversity in such a setting is more as a plan B in case a virus mutates within the environment and infects and kills the majority of the population due to a lack of diversity. Or if something from the external environment contaminates the colony.

Good point, I hadn't considered that. Although, I don't know if specicition would even take thousands of years in some cases unregulated, because Allopatric speciation, speciation by geographic isolation, has occured in within a couple of generations, mainly this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopatric_speciation#Genesis_of_reproductive_barriers.

And increased radiation could easily lead to a lot more mutations.

But even if Diversity should be preseved, its hard to explain how diversity can be both encouraged while simultaneously maintaining the sturucter of genetic code, when the nanomachines prevent the very thing, mutations, that the process of diversifying consists of.

I also assumed that the nanomachines would also act as a buffered immune system eliminating any kind of pathogens, if the environment wasn't completely sterile in the first place.