
The man who bottled evolution - ramgorur
https://msutoday.msu.edu/feature/2018/the-man-who-bottled-evolution/
======
Kattywumpus
Whenever I read about this experiment, I think about Theodore Sturgeon's
"Microcosmic God", and experience a moment of profound disappointment:

[https://tinyurl.com/microcosmicgod](https://tinyurl.com/microcosmicgod)

I won't spoil it for you. It's still a great bedtime read.

~~~
needz
Link leads nowhere for me.

~~~
sillysaurus3
[http://1pezeshk.com/wp-
content/pics/2013/01/microcosmicgodth...](http://1pezeshk.com/wp-
content/pics/2013/01/microcosmicgodtheodoresturgeon-111104040008-phpapp02_2.pdf)

------
_greim_
> The LTEE is special because it allows the team to “replay” evolution and
> thereby probe the effects of prior history on later events. After every 75
> days (500 generations), the bacteria are frozen. This serves as an organic
> data backup of sorts, allowing scientists to thaw and revive living
> “fossils.”

This is just amazing. Kudos to this team of scientists.

------
rrmm
This is an amazing experiment which took an amusing detour through scientific
denialism via Phyllis Schlafly's son.

Here's a summary I found surrounding the issue.
[https://arstechnica.com/features/2008/06/conservapedias-
evol...](https://arstechnica.com/features/2008/06/conservapedias-evolutionary-
foibles/)

------
ha8o8le
I have a friend who is somewhat of a "evolution denier" (he's not religious
and actually very intelligent). I was thinking about this from his perspective
and would like someone else perspective.

"On human terms, the LTEE generations span the equivalent of well more than a
million years of human evolution."

Haven't we evolved a lot more in 68,000 generations than the bacteria have? Or
put another way, all the bacteria has done in this time period is go from
consuming glucose to citrate, nothing else in its shape, structure, etc. So
how did humans and other creatures evolve so much over 68,000 generations?

I am 100% on board with evolution, I'm just curious about this. This is only
6-7 times more generations than when humans split from chimps (quick google
search said 6-7 million years ago).

Is it because we have way more interaction with our environment and these
bacteria are just in a little petri dish? Sounds likely.

Has anyone ever heard of people questioning evolution? I think he was saying
something about how impossible it would be to have every single thing we see
in nature be pre-written in DNA - it has just been all expressed in genes over
the millennia through natural selection.

~~~
Scaevolus
Sexual reproduction allows beneficial mutations to spread and recombine in a
population much faster than asexual reproduction (yes, e.coli has conjugation,
but it's nowhere near as powerful). A complex trait might require multiple
mutations to support it-- a gene pool that's constantly mixed by sexual
reproduction will have much higher chances of the combination arising than
with asexual reproduction.

You can observe the same thing in genetic algorithms, where crossover
("sexual" reproduction / mixing of two candidates) is often performed because
it creates more viable offspring than simple cloning with mutations.

------
ramgorur
Harvard medical school did a similar experiment on fast evolution of bacterial
resistance to antibiotics on a petri-dish. It also clearly shows the lineage
of evolution. Very interesting.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8)

------
joobus
FYI, the ecoli used in the LTEE experiment reproduce asexually, so defining
'evolution' in this sense is entirely at the discretion of the scientists. For
sexually reproducing organisms, speciation occurs when an organism can no
longer reproduce with its predecessor, a feat which science still can't prove.

~~~
moh_maya
umm, what? Darwin's finches comes to mind [1]. Also, since then, a host of
other examples. All you need to do is look at the Wikipedia page [2], which
has citations to the primary research.

Unless you mean, no one has seen it happen inside a lab? But that's not true
either.., accelerated evolution experiments with uni-cellular species with
different "sexes", leading to reproductive isolation (ergo, speciation) has
been shown [3].

How about multi-cellular species where this has been demonstrated at the broad
genetic & physiological / behavioral level? That's been done too. See these
two for a review of some of the work [4,5].

[1]
[https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/3/9/45/2701607](https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/3/9/45/2701607)

"On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of
Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection", Darwin & Wallace

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation#The_effect_of_sexua...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation#The_effect_of_sexual_reproduction_on_species_formation)

[3]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/112/14/4405](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/14/4405)

"Molecular coevolution of a sex pheromone and its receptor triggers
reproductive isolation in Schizosaccharomyces pombe"

[4]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/97/23/12398](http://www.pnas.org/content/97/23/12398)

"Natural selection and speciation"

[5]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/102/suppl_1/6522](http://www.pnas.org/content/102/suppl_1/6522)

"The genetic basis of reproductive isolation: Insights from Drosophila"

And all this from a cursory 5 minute search (including time to type this up)..

~~~
joobus
None of your citations, including Darwin's finches, prove evolution.

Your citation #3 states "In conclusion, we have succeeded in creating an
artificial reproductive group that is isolated from the WT group." They
artificially castrated a species; that is not evolution.

Citation #4: "The authors suggest that reproductive isolation has evolved in
situ as a result of...". Again, not proof.

Citation #5 adds no value at all: "Although the sample of genes characterized
thus far by various laboratories remains small, and concentrated in the genus
Drosophila, I suspect that these patterns may prove general, although likely
not universal. Our recent work, along with that of several other groups, also
suggests that the selection underlying the evolution of speciation genes may
sometimes assume a surprising form, response to intragenomic conflicts,
perhaps involving meiotic drive." Keywords: suspect, suggests, may, perhaps

You may want to believe evolution so badly, but science doesn't have the proof
yet, and that is a fact.

~~~
IntronExon
(Deleted)

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. Of all
directions not to go, that may be the nottest.

~~~
IntronExon
I’ll just not comment on this anymore, but I’m afraid I was responding to an
existing religious flame war, not creating it. I’ll be careful not to fuel
such fires again though, sorry.

Edit: sorry, my comment seems a bit dismissive, but I really do recognize that
no good comes from feeding the fire, and I wasn’t trying to weasel out of
personal responsibility in that.

