Scientists Resurrect 500-Million-Year-Old Gene Inside Modern Organism 135
An anonymous reader writes with news that researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have taken a gene from 500-million-year-old bacteria and inserted it into modern E. coli bacteria. They then allowed the bacteria to evolve over the course of a thousand generations to see whether it would resemble its original 'evolutionary trajectory.' From the article:
"After achieving the difficult task of placing the ancient gene in the correct chromosomal order and position in place of the modern gene within E. coli, Kaçar produced eight identical bacterial strains and allowed 'ancient life' to re-evolve. This chimeric bacteria composed of both modern and ancient genes survived, but grew about two times slower than its counterpart composed of only modern genes. 'The altered organism wasn’t as healthy or fit as its modern-day version, at least initially,' said Gaucher, 'and this created a perfect scenario that would allow the altered organism to adapt and become more fit as it accumulated mutations with each passing day.' The growth rate eventually increased and, after the first 500 generations, the scientists sequenced the genomes of all eight lineages to determine how the bacteria adapted. Not only did the fitness levels increase to nearly modern-day levels, but also some of the altered lineages actually became healthier than their modern counterpart."
Two words. (Score:5, Interesting)
Twelve. Monkeys.
Re:Not terribly exciting (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, a defining characteristic of the e. coli species is the lack of an ability to transport citrate across the cell membrane. Enough so that this is often used to differentiate e. coli from salmonella in cultures. So, evolving the ability to transport (and therefore metabolize) citrate in the lab [wikipedia.org] would seem to be a pretty good example of e. coli becoming something other than e. coli (lacking one of the defining characteristics of the species).
As a microbiologist... (Score:5, Interesting)
evolution vs physics (Score:5, Interesting)
What's amazing in modern society is how so many non-scientists (mainly religious fundamentalists of different sects) think evolution is very much up for debate while problems in physics are totally solved when it's the other way around. I was confronted once by an anti-evolution person who thought exactly how gravity works was a long ago solved case but evolution was some new wacky baseless idea being forced on gullible unbelievers.
Re:Two words. (Score:5, Interesting)
Jurassic. Park.
so in other words?
What could possibly go wrong....
Last line of the summary:
Not only did the fitness levels increase to nearly modern-day levels, but also some of the altered lineages actually became healthier than their modern counterpart.
So yes, one hopes this doesn't get out of the Level 4 Bio Lab.
500 million years ago there were no warm blooded animals, and most life was aquatic [wikipedia.org]. Whereas today, its rare (but not un-heard of) [jst.go.jp] to find an e.coli strain that can live for long outside the gut of a warm blooded animal, clearly this was not the case in the Cambrian.
Chances are this gene is from a time when water born e.coli were the norm.