First Lab Demonstration That the Ability To Evolve Can Itself Evolve 72
ananyo writes "Research on Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, shows that the capacity to evolve can itself be the target of natural selection. B. burgdorferi can cause a chronic infection even if its animal host mounts a strong immune response — evading those defenses by tweaking the shape and expression of its main surface antigen, VIsE. A series of unexpressed genetic sequences organized into 'cassettes' recombine with the VIsE gene, changing the resulting protein such that it escapes detection by the host's immune system. The researchers studied the molecular evolution of the cassettes' genetic sequences in 12 strains of B. burgdorferi. They found that natural selection seemed to favor bacteria with more genetic variability within their cassettes, and hence a greater capacity to generate different versions of the antigen. 'Greater diversity among the cassettes in itself shouldn't be a selective advantage considering they aren't expressed and don't do anything else,' says lead author Dustin Brisson. 'But we did find evidence of selection, so the question is: what else could it be for besides evolvability?'"
Re:Lab (Score:3, Informative)
Wasn't Lyme disease created in a lab by humans, in Lyme, CT? I'm not sure this is the best example.
Um No. The area of Lyme/Old Lyme, CT is where is was identified. They didn't originally even know that it was a tick-born bacterial infection.
There's even a term for it: Requisite Variety (Score:4, Informative)