The Long Term Evolution Experiment

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Scientists have been trying for years to figure out how to do a long term yeast evolution experiment, you know, selecting on a multi syce trat. Now they've seen the evolutiono snowflakees that are visible to the naked eye. We can compete existing organisms with any of their ancestral points at any time we want. Andso we can, we can atlly go back and pull out our living fossil record, so we know exactly how they are changing.

We’ve talked about the very origin of life, but certain transitions along its subsequent history were incredibly important. Perhaps none more so than the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms, which made possible an incredible diversity of organisms and structures. Will Ratcliff studies the physics that constrains multicellular structures, examines the minute changes in certain yeast cells that allows them to become multicellular, and does long-term evolution experiments in which multicellularity spontaneously evolves and grows. We can’t yet create life from non-life, but we can reproduce critical evolutionary steps in the lab.

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William Ratcliff received his Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. He is currently Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. Among his awards are a Packard Fellowship and being named in Popular Science‘s “Brilliant 10” of 2016.

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