Experimental evolution is a powerful method for testing fundamental questions in evolution and ecology. I will present recent work showing how high-throughput sequencing methods can provide insights into a classic problem in evolutionary biology, the evolution of sex [1], as well as eco-evolutionary dynamics in experiment populations of E. coli (the Lenksi LTE) and and yeast [2]. Currently, our understanding of the evolution and ecology of natural communities comes from the “top down” approaches of community ecology and metagenome sequencing. Although experimental evolution has the potential to contribute, most microbial evolution experiments are in laboratory settings far removed from the actual conditions that microbes in the wild would experience. My work seeks to connect these two fields, so that the mechanistic insights possible in the lab are applied in experimental settings that better approximate natural and clinical environments.
References
Sex speeds adaptation by altering the dynamics of molecular evolution.
McDonald MJ, Rice DP, Desai MM.
Nature. 2016
Crowded growth leads to the spontaneous evolution of semistable coexistence in laboratory yeast populations.
Frenkel EM, McDonald MJ, Van Dyken JD, Kosheleva K, Lang GI, Desai MM.
PNAS. 2015