Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab

sea-maid submitted, created time 5 months 1 week (www.newscientist.com)

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

Ordinarily E. coli cannot process citrate. In fact, this trait is one of the things that researchers use to distinguish E. coli from other species. This team separated E. coli into twelve separate cultures and allowed it to divide. No matter how they replayed things, only extracts from the one citrate-plus culture ever re-developed citrate processing abilities. "Something, he concluded, must have happened around generation 20,000 that laid the groundwork for Cit+ to later evolve."

"In the meantime, the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome. Instead, a chance event can sometimes open evolutionary doors for one population that remain forever closed to other populations with different histories."

Keywords: evolutionary biology creation science evolution intelligent design bacteria adaptation politics creationism