Abstract
In February 1988, Richard Lenski set up 12 replicate populations of a single genotype of Escherichia coli in a simple nutrient medium. He has been following their evolution ever since. Here, Lenski answers provocative questions from Jeremy Fox about his iconic "Long-Term Evolution Experiment" (LTEE). The LTEE is a remarkable case study of the interplay of determinism and chance in evolution—and in the conduct of science.
Highlights
More than 27 years ago, Richard Lenski set up his Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE), in which 12 replicate populations of the workhorse bacterium Escherichia coli were placed into simple, identical environments with glucose as the limiting resource
I wonder, if you hadn’t had specific hypotheses for any of your motivating questions, would the Long-Term Evolution Experiment" (LTEE) still have seemed like a good idea? I can imagine that it would have
The reason I didn’t do that with the LTEE, though, was because one of my core motivating questions concerned the repeatability of evolutionary dynamics across replicate population
Summary
More than 27 years ago, Richard Lenski set up his Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE), in which 12 replicate populations of the workhorse bacterium Escherichia coli were placed into simple, identical environments with glucose as the limiting resource. I wonder, if you hadn’t had specific hypotheses for any of your motivating questions, would the LTEE still have seemed like a good idea?
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