Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Direct evidence of evolution

Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift In the Lab
Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.

The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens...


In a nutshell--after tens of thousands of generations the bacteria evolved to thrive using a growth medium they had no business eating. A small step of sorts, but that's also the point.
We've got more evidence showing that we understand evolution than we do for gravity. For seriousness. Compared to gravity, evolution is cake!

See? Don't get me started... >_<

2 comments:

Mr. Pony said...

Who is that diving-handshake-Speed-Stick-wearing-insurance-salesman-named-Matt guy they're using to represent all of humanity in that "Tree of Life" cladogram? I would have preferred it if they had used Siegfried! Or Roy!

odori said...

The Matt guy makes me wish we'd soon have a mutation so we could evolve beyond him.