Evolutionary biologist Jay T. Lennon’s research team has been studying a synthetically constructed minimal cell that has been stripped of all but its essential genes. The team found that the streamlined cell can evolve just as fast as a normal cell—demonstrating the capacity for organisms to adapt, even with an unnatural genome that would seemingly provide little flexibility.
Details about the study can be found in a paper featured in Nature. Roy Z. Moger-Reischer, a Ph.D. student in the Lennon lab at the time of the study, is first author on the paper.
“Listen, if there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us is that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but… ife finds a way,” said Ian Malcolm, Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park, the 1993 science fiction film about a park with living dinosaurs.
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