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Related Concept Videos

Evolution of New Traits in Microbes01:24

Evolution of New Traits in Microbes

Microorganisms evolve rapidly due to their large population sizes and short generation times, often exhibiting measurable changes within days under laboratory conditions. Natural selection acts on standing genetic variation, enabling the retention and amplification of beneficial traits that confer fitness advantages in changing environments.Adaptive Pigment Regulation in RhodobacterIn Rhodobacter, a genus of purple non-sulfur bacteria, light-harvesting pigments such as bacteriochlorophyll and...
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Microbial evolution occurs rapidly due to short generation times and a variety of genetic processes, including horizontal gene transfer, mutation, recombination, and genetic drift. These mechanisms collectively enable microbes to adapt swiftly to changing environments.Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) allows genes to move between different species and occurs through three main mechanisms: conjugation, transformation, and transduction. Conjugation involves direct cell-to-cell contact for DNA...
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Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli
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Published on: August 18, 2023

Slowly switching between environments facilitates reverse evolution in small populations.

Longzhi Tan1, Jeff Gore

  • 1Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution
|October 3, 2012
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Evolutionary adaptation reversibility depends on environmental change speed. Slow environmental shifts enhance evolutionary reversals in small populations by reducing mutations, but this effect diminishes in larger populations.

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Last Updated: May 18, 2026

Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli
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Published on: August 18, 2023

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04:52

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06:03

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Published on: September 20, 2016

Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Population genetics

Background:

  • Natural populations adapt to changing environments.
  • Evolutionary reversals, where adaptations are undone, are observed but not fully understood.
  • The influence of environmental change rate on evolutionary reversibility is largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how the rate of environmental change affects the reversibility of evolution.
  • To determine the role of population size in environmentally induced evolutionary reversals.

Main Methods:

  • Computational modeling of evolutionary processes.
  • Phenomenological model of clonal interference.
  • Wright-Fisher stochastic simulation incorporating genetic diversity.

Main Results:

  • Slow environmental switching increases evolutionary reversibility in small populations.
  • Slow switching reduces acquired mutations and increases reverse evolution probability in small populations.
  • Increasing population size reduces the impact of slow switching on evolutionary reversibility.

Conclusions:

  • The rate of environmental change is a critical factor influencing the reversibility of evolution.
  • Findings provide testable hypotheses for experimental evolution studies on adaptation and reversal.