The New Scientist reports that over 20 years and 44,000 generations in the lab, a particular population of Escherichia coli (or E. coli for short) bacteria have evolved the ability to metabolize citrate, a nutrient that the bacteria normally can’t use. This is a big deal — something akin to humans developing the ability […]
Entries Tagged as 'evolution'
e. coli bacteria take evolutionary leap
June 11th, 2008 · No Comments
Tags: evolution · fauna · nature · neato
america’s widespread experiments with human “artifical selection”
May 25th, 2008 · 2 Comments
The folks at Damn Interesting have done it again — this time with a great piece by Alan Bellows on the origins of eugenics, the practice of selectively breeding humans for the purpose of improving the gene pool.
From the article:
In 1865, Darwin’s half-cousin Sir Francis Galton pried the lid from yet another worm-can with the […]
Tags: america · evolution · history · nature · scary
italian lizards evolve dramatically in just 37 years
April 24th, 2008 · 1 Comment
I’ve started making National Geographic one of my regular online stops, and I’m starting to realize just how fantastic this magazine is. A few days ago it reported that in 1971, five pairs of Italian wall lizards were moved onto a small Croatian island. Today, they’ve taken over, and their bodies have adapted […]
