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Procedure for Adaptive Laboratory Evolution of Microorganisms Using a Chemostat
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Published on: September 20, 2016

Evolution: what is an organism?

Stuart A West1, E Toby Kiers

  • 1Department of Zoology, Oxford University, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK. stuart.west@zoo.ox.ac.uk

Current Biology : CB
|January 13, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Biologists struggle to define an organism. A new adaptation-based approach offers a simple, two-dimensional measure of

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Theoretical biology

Background:

  • The definition of an organism is a long-standing challenge in biology.
  • Existing definitions often lack consensus and can be ambiguous.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To propose a novel, quantitative framework for defining an organism.
  • To introduce a conceptually simple measure of 'organismality' based on adaptation.

Main Methods:

  • Development of a theoretical model based on the concept of adaptation.
  • Introduction of a two-dimensional measure to quantify organismality.

Main Results:

  • The adaptation-based approach provides a clear and consistent way to define an organism.
  • The proposed measure effectively quantifies 'organismality' in a simple, two-dimensional space.

Conclusions:

  • This work offers a robust solution to the problem of defining an organism.
  • The new measure of organismality has significant implications for theoretical and empirical biology.