By - - PHYSORG.COM
Added: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:46:03 UTC

Postdoctoral Fellow Betül Kaçar and Associate Professor Eric Gaucher are watching evolution in action resurrecting a 500-million-year-old gene from bacteria and inserted it into modern-day Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. Credit: Georgia Institute of Technology

It's a project 500 million years in the making. Only this time, instead of playing on a movie screen in Jurassic Park, it's happening in a lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Using a process called paleo-experimental evolution, Georgia Tech researchers have resurrected a 500-million-year-old gene from bacteria and inserted it into modern-day Escherichia coli(E. coli) bacteria. This bacterium has now been growing for more than 1,000 generations, giving the scientists a front row seat to observe evolution in action.

"This is as close as we can get to rewinding and replaying the molecular tape of life," said scientist Betül Kaçar, a NASA astrobiology postdoctoral fellow in Georgia Tech's NASA Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution. "The ability to observe an ancient gene in a modern organism as it evolves within a modern cell allows us to see whether the evolutionary trajectory once taken will repeat itself or whether a life will adapt following a different path."

In 2008, Kaçar's postdoctoral advisor, Associate Professor of Biology Eric Gaucher, successfully determined the ancient genetic sequence of Elongation Factor-Tu (EF-Tu), an essential protein in E. coli. EFs are one of the most abundant proteins in bacteria, found in all known cellular life and required for bacteria to survive. That vital role made it a perfect protein for the scientists to answer questions about evolution.

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TAGGED: BIOLOGY, EVOLUTION, GENETICS