Frontiers of Science: Time Travel in Experimental Evolution

Title: Time Travel in Experimental Evolution

Featuring: Dr. Richard Lenski – Hannah Distinguished Professor of Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University

Richard Lenski and his team perform experiments with microorganisms to watch evolution in real time. In an experiment that he started 28 years ago, he and his team have followed 12 populations of E. coli bacteria as they have evolved in the laboratory for over 65,000 generations. The results of this work provide insights into the process of adaptation by natural selection, the dynamics of genome evolution, and the origin of new functions. Viable samples from throughout the experiment have been stored in freezers, allowing organisms that lived in different generations to be revived and compared—in effect, time travel.