Submission + - Darwin gets a fresh boost (uottawa.ca)
plasmidmap writes: On the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, a team of evolutionary biologists from the University of Ottawa and the University of Aarhus have taken another look at the theory, and once again Darwin comes off looking pretty good. The researchers watched evolution in action in a rapidly growing fungus. The goal of the work was to understand how adaptations that allow an organism to out-compete and out-reproduce its kin are built up from occasional mutations in DNA sequences. To see what was happening--step by step--the researchers examined mutations over the course of 800 generations in two different sized fungal populations made up of more than 100 fungi lineages. The experimental results revealed that almost all the evolving lines adapted using just a few mutations. 'Darwin was right about natural selection, but it doesn't need to be as slow as he thought. Adaptation can happen quickly because just a few mutations are involved and of the largest benefits tend to happen early on,' states principal investigator, Dr. Rees Kassen. The research demonstrates that it should not be a surprise to see rapid adaptation in nature, whether it be to novel antibiotics in our hospitals or of viruses to new hosts. The key is for natural populations to adapt quickly enough to avoid being on the wrong end of natural selection. Read the article in PLoS Biology (open access).
