If you went back thousands of years and “replayed the tape of life,” would you end up with humans and the species we know today, or would small differences caused by chance result in completely different plants and animals?
Michael Doebeli, a mathematician and evolutionary biologist at UBC, and postdoctoral researcher Matthew Herron conducted three separate experiments under the same laboratory conditions, observing 1,000 generations of E. coli bacteria as they evolved into two different strains — a process known as diversification that eventually gives rise to separate species.
Doebeli was surprised to discover that in his study, all three bacterial populations evolved in almost exactly the same way, suggesting that chance or randomness doesn’t play a big role, at least over a short period of time, such as 1,000 generations, and in laboratory conditions. Not only did the bacteria go through similar mutations, but similar changes in the populations occurred at similar times.
The study suggests that evolution is surprisingly predictable and its course seems relatively unaffected by chance events.
For the full paper published in the journal PLoS Biology, click here
Source: CBC News