Jurassic Park vive

Jurassic Park in a petri dish: Scientists insert ancient DNA gene into modern bacteria to see if evolution plays out the same way twice

By Eddie Wrenn

PUBLISHED: 08:33 GMT, 1 May 2012 | UPDATED: 08:43 GMT, 1 May 2012

Millions of years ago, a bacterial gene began evolving, and evolving, and evolving...

That bacteria turned out to be E. Coli, and now it lives in the intestines of warm-blooded creatures like us, generally harmless except when it gives us a bout of food poisoning.

Now scientists at Georgia Tech University have re-wound the clock, synthesising one of the genes called EF-Tu as it was 500million years ago, and inserting the ancient gene into E. Coli in place of the modern sequence.

The researchers - making reference to hit 1993 film Jurassic Park - say they are curious to see if 'life finds a way'.

Their experiment aimed to watch evolution in action - seeing if the gene follows the same evolutionary path as the modern bacteria, or if it takes a different route altogether.

Now, researchers Eric Gaucher and Betül Arslan have have let eight strands of the virus grow for 1,000 generations, and have already witnessed 'evolution in action'.

Gaucher worked out what the gene sequence of EF-Tu, which plays a role in protein synthesis, would have been like 500 millions years ago, and Arslan synthesised the gene and placed it in E. coli.

Researcher Betül Arslan quotes a line on his website from the Steven Spielberg film Jurassic Park, which plays on the same concept of splicing old genes into modern material to recreate past.

He writes: 'Just like a bacterial Jurassic Park would be, I put ancient and modern bacterial genes together, and then observe the molecular changes they encounter in order to adapt & survive.

'Observing the real-time evolution of ancient genes as they adapt to the conditions of modern bacteria allows us to analyse evolution in action.'

According to New Scientist, the ancient gene grew less than half as fast as usual, but then - as the eight bacterias evolved independently - their rate of growth grew faster over time - a sign that evolution had occurred.

The research team observed that EF-Tu - their ancient gene - was unchanged after a thousand generations - but the genes that interacted with EF-Tu had changed.

According to New Scientist, with thousands of interacting genes being used in protein synthesis, it was not a surprise that the mutations occurred in one of EF-Tu's partners than to EF-Tu itself.

But, as the experiment continues, the pair will be watching to see what changes occur in the gene, and whether it will follow the same evolutionary path of its ancient brothers and sisters - or branch out into something new altogether.

Tocca sperare che Ian Malcom non avesse ragione

E.Coli è ovunque D:

paxxissimi

Sei incredibile