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Evolution experiment yields yeast 20,000x bigger and 10,000x tougher
New Atlas ^ | May 15, 2023 | By Michael Irving

Posted on 05/17/2023 12:41:55 PM PDT by Red Badger

Scientists are conducting a long-term experiment on evolution in the lab, to investigate how single-celled organisms could evolve into multicellular lifeforms. After thousands of generations, their yeast grew 20,000 times bigger and 10,000 times tougher.

The idea of an evolutionary “missing link” usually conjures images of a hairy ape-like hominid, but there are actually much more profound missing links in the chain. One of the biggest gaps sits between single-celled and multicellular organisms, which marks a key step in the development of complex life on Earth.

Now, scientists from Georgia Tech have reported the first results of an experiment that they hope to continue running for decades, with a pretty lofty goal – evolving single-celled lifeforms into brand new multicellular lifeforms. Directed evolution experiments have been conducted for decades, even winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2018, but those are usually focused on making new drugs or solving other problems, not plugging holes in our distant family tree.

In this first phase of this Multicellularity Long-Term Evolution Experiment (MuLTEE), the researchers started with a species called snowflake yeast. The microbes were grown in shaking incubators, and every day the team would engage in a spot of artificial natural selection – colonies that had grown the fastest and reached the biggest sizes were selected for further cultivation. Repeat this process thousands of times over, and you’ve got a pretty good approximation of the environmental forces that favor certain characteristics in natural evolution.

And sure enough, after about 3,000 generations, the yeast had evolved to form clusters of more than 500,000 cells – more than 20,000 times larger than the original strain. In the process they’d become visible to the naked eye, and had become around 10,000 times tougher, on par with wood.

(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...


TOPICS: Education; Health/Medicine; History; Science
KEYWORDS: dietandcuisine; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; mars; science; terraforming
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Snowflake yeast clusters go from ~100 cells per cluster (left tube) to nearly half a million cells per cluster (right tube).

https://research.gatech.edu/journey-origins-multicellular-life-long-term-experimental-evolution-lab

1 posted on 05/17/2023 12:41:55 PM PDT by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger

But does this yeast MAKE GOOD BEER?


2 posted on 05/17/2023 12:46:55 PM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: Red Badger

They always want to start on first base, using God’s creation…


3 posted on 05/17/2023 12:48:19 PM PDT by aMorePerfectUnion (Fraud vitiates everything)
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To: Red Badger

—> and every day the team would engage in a spot of artificial natural selection

Unguided evolution!


4 posted on 05/17/2023 12:49:14 PM PDT by aMorePerfectUnion (Fraud vitiates everything)
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To: Red Badger
After thousands of generations, their yeast ...

... was still yeast.

5 posted on 05/17/2023 12:50:13 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy (“You want it one way, but it's the other way”)
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To: Red Badger

But it is still yeast. Still a single cell, doing the same thing yeast does.


6 posted on 05/17/2023 12:50:29 PM PDT by FatherofFive (I support Trump. Not the GOP)
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To: Red Badger
Snowflake yeast clusters, eh?

Must be what they use to bake snowflake rolls.
Right?


7 posted on 05/17/2023 12:50:48 PM PDT by GaltAdonis
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To: Red Badger

But will it take over the world? /smirk


8 posted on 05/17/2023 12:51:33 PM PDT by Salman (It's not a slippery slope if it was part of the program all along. )
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To: Red Badger
IMHO, the Cambrian Explosion (and similar "explosions" like that in the archaeological record) is a glaring problem in the math of natural selection.

When repeated experiments on a scientific theory show that the model's math is off by a factor over 1,000, it's time to reduce the theory to a hypothesis or lower. The prediction by Darwinists is that archaeology would show a gradual speciation across billions of years from simple organisms to the advanced organisms we have today. But the Cambrian Explosion event recorded by archaeologists show that 50-80% of all known phyla sprang up into existence within a relatively brief 2 to 3 million year time frame about 500 million years ago. https://reasons.org/explore/publications/articles/the-great-unconformity-and-the-cambrian-explosion-conform-to-the-genesis-1-creation-account. Most evolution ("evolution" not necessarily being natural, but possible intelligently made like software evolves) occurred way too rapidly for natural selection to be the cause.

9 posted on 05/17/2023 12:52:05 PM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: tired&retired
But does this yeast MAKE GOOD BEER?

No - it'll be yeast infections that fight back!
10 posted on 05/17/2023 12:52:12 PM PDT by larrytown (A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do. Then they graduate...)
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To: tired&retired

Had the same exact thought!


11 posted on 05/17/2023 12:55:51 PM PDT by frogjerk (More people have died trusting the government than not trusting the government.)
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To: Tell It Right

Genesis 1

20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.


12 posted on 05/17/2023 12:56:55 PM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Red Badger

Two problems there.

1) How did they get to the “ancestor” stage.

2) How would the “Ancestor” get to the “Evolved” stage in a natural hostile environment?

It’s pretty darned easy in a test tube, but test tubes didn’t “evolve” until around the 17th Century AD.


13 posted on 05/17/2023 12:57:17 PM PDT by P-Marlowe (I got the <ΙΧΘΥΣ>< variant. Catch it. John 3:16)
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To: tired&retired

10000 times quicker!.................


14 posted on 05/17/2023 12:58:28 PM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Red Badger

What you gonna do when it climbs out of the vat & starts biting peoples heads off?


15 posted on 05/17/2023 12:59:01 PM PDT by Bounced2X (Boomer - I survived childhood with no bike helmet.)
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To: Bounced2X

RUN!...............................


16 posted on 05/17/2023 12:59:32 PM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Red Badger

Micro evolution. Not macro.


17 posted on 05/17/2023 1:03:30 PM PDT by jacknhoo (Luke 12:51; Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation.)
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To: larrytown

“No - it’ll be yeast infections that fight back!”

If it ever gets out into the world I think I will invest in anti-fungal medicine.


18 posted on 05/17/2023 1:05:07 PM PDT by nomorelurker
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To: tired&retired

Still yeast. The question is was information added to the genome. Was information lost or is the change a mutation? Without knowing the above particulars, it has no useful meaning.


19 posted on 05/17/2023 1:05:11 PM PDT by D Rider ( )
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To: Red Badger

And so when are these super evolved experiments scheduled to escape the lab out into the wild?


20 posted on 05/17/2023 1:05:14 PM PDT by AFreeBird
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