Can we predict how animals and plants evolve in response to changes in the environment? Maybe, according to preliminary research from Rice University.
Associate professor Yousif Shamoo and two students recently conducted experiments on a microbe, G. stearothermophilus, to see how it adapted to different environmental circumstances. In the experiment, the dominant strains of separate generations of the microbe ended up developing the same mutant gene in response to the same environmental hazards.
Conceivably, if scientists can predict how the microbes will adapt to changes in their environment, they can develop antibiotics that won’t be rapidly rendered ineffective by stronger, successive generations. In other words, if researchers can figure out what gene might evolve in response to a medicine, they can figure out a way around that response.
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