It’s a standing joke that creationists demand a complete time-lapse recording of evolution before they’re going to believe it. Joke no more: we’ve got one. It’s a movie of bacteria evolving antibiotic resistance. I don’t even need to explain it, because the video explains everything that’s going on.
Different old joke now: But they’re still just bacteria
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Also, you should be horrified by the power of evolution. It took 11 days for the bacterial population to evolve resistance to a lethal, thousand-fold increase in antibiotic concentration.
That’s just a series of pictures. So many missing leaks between the frames.
*missing links, obviously
Yabbut see, that’s just “micro-evolution.” Macro evolution is different.
Err, somehow.
“But they’re still bacteria!” I can hear them say.
“It’s not a fish”
Yes well, I didn’t see any monkeys in in that video and we all know you evolution says everything came from monkeys. Also 11 days? Totally lacking in thousands and millions of years. Furthermore did they try removing all the bacterial flagella, huh, huh? See that proves they were irreducibly complex. Checkmate, atheists!
=8)-DX
The word “random” seems to be the first real problem for those who believe in phantasms that control everything. Random implies a lack of control. The second is some selection being made without the intervention of their phantasms.
Pitiful that they won’t see the problem is their unrealistic belief in something they can’t/show that exists with solid physical evidence.
This is stunning!
I love to see how various clumps form, and the different mutant strains push ahead.
Question: why starting with two populations running for the center, rather than just one to the side moving towards the other side?
At a guess, to ensure that the result is not a fluke, but is replicable (and at approximately the same rate).
My reaction: that’s one of the most frightening videos I’ve ever watched.
Burn it.
Burn it with fire.
Burn it.
Burn it with fire.
Sorry. They’ve already devoloped a resistance to that.
Then let’s take off and nuke the entire site from orbit: it’s the only way to be sure.
let me get to my bunker
.
I’m old. I have one from the 60s.
Terrifying. And beautiful.
Beautiful.
And utterly terrifying. We are so fucked if we don’t start developing new antibiotics.
And read the comments for this video on YouTube to see idiocy in action.
… then why are there still monkeys?
Wait… I may be doing that wrong…
Holy MRSA, bugman. That is scary.
Wikipedia says that E Coli can reproduce about every 20 minutes, so “11 days” is approximately 750-800 generations. Every 300 generations or so, a mutation that provides 10 times the resistance occurs. It is somewhat surprising that given our carelessness with antibiotics to date that we’ve not already been wiped out by pathogens. Perhaps our immune systems can adapt on a similar time scale? (Which is actually a wee bit more impressive.)
I thought the Lenski experiment was awesome when I heard of it, and that was going on (is still going on?) For decades.
This is just fucking nuts. They spent a long time at that first barrier from 0x to 1x and you saw it hit that edge clearly, but they blew past the 10x, 100x, and 1000x edges so easily it was like they didn’t even exist. Sure they were reproducing a little more slowly once they hit 1000x, but thats like some future H. Sapiens strain being a little drowsy after chugging a gallon of cyanide!
I’ll say it again: this is fucking nuts . I can’t even comprehend how this is possible.
Regarding whitehatlurker’s question, I have no expertise at all in epidemiology, but my supposition is that the resistance they are evolved here is a completely different trait than the strength of their virulence. Being less killable might not make them more lethal, and might even select against lethality so it can milk the host for all it’s worth. Parasites can’t exist without something to parasitize after all.
If bacteria evolved, how come there are still bacteria, smartypants?
Still no crocoduck, though. WHERE IS THE CROCKODUCK?!
And now I want to repeat that, with different kinds of antibiotics in each stripe, or with stripes without any antibiotics inbetween
Pretty terrifying. However I would love to see the converse experiment. Since bacteria reproduce so fast I would expect them to loose resistance to a specific antibiotic fairly quickly once you stop selecting for it.
Eh? Why? I’m very much not a biologist, but I don’t see any necessary reason for an evolved trait to vanish in the absence of whatever selected for it, assuming that the evolved trait is not detrimental. It could vanish or “decrease”, of course, but I simply do not see why it “must”(which is how I am reading the quoted comment). The experts here can correct us, and presumably better explain.
@WMDKitty — Survivor #15, which would then be to feed livestock, breeding more resistant bacteria and the cycle continues unabated.
To which I usually reply: “True. That’s why humans are still monkeys.”
But if someone doesn’t want to get it, they will not get it.
Yes it is still going on (since 1988). According to Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge, it reached the 65000 generations mark earlier this year (June-2016).
@23: if you require a new protein to resist the antibiotic, then it will be an advantage to lose it if there is no antibiotics around, because otherwise you are wasting your resources on a useless protein. If the resistance is neutral, resource-wise, then the corresponding gene can just randomly break at some point. I think you could use statistics to calculate the probability of a neutral trait being lost depending on the number of generations. Maybe a real scientist could tell me whenever such statistical models already exist?
@blf: Disclaimer: I am not a biologist but my reasoning is the following: Mutations can work both ways. You can have advantageous mutations and mutations that break already evolved traits.
Let’s assume that an evolved trait doesn’t cost the organism anything to maintain. If you stop selecting for that trait a mutation may break the genes for that trait without consequences. Since the number of DNA sequences that are complete garbage is probably much larger than the number of DNA sequences that have an effect, the sequences should decay over time. And the decay should happen more quickly for a fast reproducing organism than an organism that reproduces slowly.
If the trait does come at a cost for the organism it should happen even faster since it is actually advantageous for the organism to loose it.
But I would love to hear a biologist discuss this topic. I am sure that somebody has already done research on that.
The number of sequences that are garbage is much much less than the number that are functional in bacteria (the opposite is true for humans).
I would bet that the traits gained in this experiment are quite disadvantageous in the absence of antibiotic, but I don’t think that’s the case in the wild, where the bacteria have to evolve antibiotic resistance but don’t have a bunch of lovely agar to grow on and a complete absence of competitors and immune systems.
For a neutral trait, I would say it takes a long time to lose it, based how many genes have a single mutation in them. A gene with a single mutation is a probably close to neutral, and it if neutral genes were lost quickly very few genes would stay having just one mutation.