Charles Darwin (1809-82), British scientist, who laid the foundation of modern evolutionary theory with his concept of the development of all forms of life through the slow-working process of natural selection. His work was a major influence on the life and earth sciences and on modern thought in general.
Photo credit, The British Library
As one of the nation’s top research universities, MSU prides itself on making breakthrough discoveries and finding practical solutions that improve people’s lives, from the cancer-fighting drugs cisplatin and carboplatin to key ingredients in Tamiflu. By expanding research funding and providing more opportunities for graduate and undergraduate student involvement, the possibilities for research are endless—and so is our vision.
Richard Lenski in his lab.
Photo by Bruce Fox, University Relations
To the average person, Richard Lenski’s lab looks like a typical workspace for a scientist with its rows and rows of test tubes containing different colored liquids. What fills those test tubes are tens of thousands of strains of bacteria that are older than most current students at MSU—more than 20 years of research that aims to unlock some of the mysteries of evolution.
Lenski, John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Microbial Ecology, and his colleagues pioneered the use of bacteria in long-term test tube evolution experiments to probe how organisms adapt to environmental conditions and produce populations of organisms that have increased fitness. In this landmark project that began in 1988, Lenski has followed nearly 50,000 generations of E. coli bacteria—descendents from a single microbe—that are revealing some of the mysteries of genetic mutation. The project, still going strong, provides a framework for practical applications in biotechnology.
A member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, Lenski is appointed in the Departments of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Zoology, and Crop and Soil Sciences. He collaborates with a team of computer scientists, physicists, and philosophers who together have developed a revolutionary computer program that allows digital organisms to test generalizations about how life has evolved. Through the use of self-replicating, mutating computer programs, Lenski and his colleagues have demonstrated that highly complex function can result from random mutation followed by natural selection. Darwin would be proud.
Learn more
MSU Special Report—Discovering Darwin
MSU Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics
MSU Department of Zoology
MSU Department of Crop and Soil Sciences
MSU Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior—Interdisciplinary Graduate Program
Digital Evolution Laboratory
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