Arrived at #Lucknow this afternoon, to a warm welcome at Choudhary Charan Singh Airport. Looking forward to be part of a series of events lined up for the day.
A mind-blowing paper has come out today in @Nature
In 2016, JC Venter Institute scientists trimmed a bacterial genome to its barest minimum required for life to synthesize what they called a "minimal genome" (https://t.co/Rk8oZJ0bUj).
Today, a group of scientists from Indiana University reports how that minimal genome evolved over 2000 generations in comparison to the non-minimal genome.
The authors found that even when you reduce a bacterial genome to its absolute minimum where every nucleotide matters, the genome undergoes mutational events generation after generation as much as the non-minimal genome. One simply cannot stop the evolution.
Just over 300 days of evolution (equivalent to 40,000 years in humans) the minimal cell has gained everything it lacked in fitness on day one in comparison to the non-minimal cell.
When comparing the evolved traits between the minimal and non-minimal cells, the scientists found something striking. The evolutionary process increased the cell size of non-minimal cells but not that of the minimal cell. But that is not the striking part.
The scientists were able to identify the key mutation that resulted in cell size evolution. And it turned out that the mutation that helped the non-minimal cells to grow bigger is the same that helped the minimal cells to stay smaller. Growing bigger had a survival advantage for non-minimal cells and not growing bigger had a survival advantage for minimal cells. So, the mutation had a context-dependent effect. This just demonstrates that the evolutionary effects on traits have no absolute direction. All that matter is what is beneficial for the organism's survival.
The conclusion of the paper is metaphorically a quote from the Jurassic Park movie:
โListen, if thereโs 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 . . . life finds a way". (https://t.co/UlxRlb86CT)
https://t.co/zA9OAqSoAu
"I had the best time of my life when I was in Germany with the Humboldt fellowship" - great exchange with @AvHStiftung Alumni in Lucknow, also learnt a few things about astronomy๐ญ, cardiology๐ซ and biochemistry๐งฌ.
๐จI wrote about BA.5โthe latest coronavirus variant to rise to dominanceโand why it matters.
This is an attempt to clearly lay out what we know about it, and to cut through the morass of misinformation that has already accumulated around it. 1/
https://t.co/j1sbQh2QaM