Researchers Catch Evolution In The Act
by admin on Jan.02, 2010, under Science News
US-German team measures how quickly genomes changeMutations are the raw material of evolution. Charles Darwin already recognized that evolution depends on heritable differences between individuals: those who are better adapted to the environment have better chances to pass on their genes to the next generation. A species can only evolve if the genome changes through new mutations, with the best new variants surviving the sieve of selection. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, and Indiana University in Bloomington have now been able to measure for the first time directly the speed with which new mutations occur in plants. Their findings shed new light on a fundamental evolutionary process. They explain, for example, why resistance to herbicides can appear within just a few years. (Science, January 1, 2010)”While the long term effects of genome mutations are quite well understood, we did not know how often new mutations arise in the first place,” said Detlef Weigel, director at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. It is routine today to compare the genomes of related animal or plant species. Such comparisons, however, ignore mutations that have been lost in the millions of years since two species separated. The teams of Weigel and his colleague Michael Lynch at Indiana University therefore wanted to scrutinize the signature of evolution before selection occurs…
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Researchers Catch Evolution In The Act
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