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Updated: Feb 20, 2026

Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli
Published on: August 18, 2023
Arresting Evolution
James J Bull1, Jeffrey E Barrick2
1Department of Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA; Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA; Both authors contributed equally.
Abstract:
Evolution in the form of selective breeding has long been harnessed as a useful tool by humans. However, rapid evolution can also be a danger to our health and a stumbling block for biotechnology. Unwanted evolution can underlie the emergence of drug and pesticide resistance, cancer, and weeds. It makes live vaccines and engineered cells inherently unreliable and unpredictable, and therefore potentially unsafe. Yet, there are strategies that have been and can possibly be used to stop or slow many types of evolution. We review and classify existing population genetics-inspired methods for arresting evolution. Then, we discuss how genome editing techniques enable a radically new set of approaches to limit evolution.
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