Replaying evolution reveals the benefits of being slow and steady | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine: "Video game players are used to replaying history. They can load up any saved game and start afresh, sometimes making different choices that lead to alternative endings. Life, sadly, is no game and it’s far more difficult to reload and start again… difficult, but not impossible. In a laboratory in Michigan State University, Richard Lenski repeatedly replays evolution from saved files.
Lenski’s aptly named “long-term evolution experiment” is the longest-running in history, and one of the most important. It looks deceptively simple – just twelve gently shaking flasks of sugary solution, each containing a strain of the gut bacterium Escherichia coli. Lenski bred the dozen strains from a common ancestor in 1998. Every day since then, his team has transferred one per cent of the cells into a fresh flask to grow anew. Last month, the bacteria passed their 50,000th generation."
