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Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:05:59 GMT

I have moved this blog over to Wordpress. I will probably keep this here for a while longer but it may not be updated frequently. Join me at my new location.

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:02:02 GMT

This would be fun to play with Darwinian Evolution on a Chip: [Via PLoS Biology: New Articles]

Catalytic activity was measured for the starting (open circles) and final evolved (filled circles) enzymes. (A) The observed rate constant, kobs, was determined for various concentrations of substrate and fit to the Michaelis-Menten equation. (B) Values for kobs were obtained in the presence of 0.1 μM substrate for variants of the starting enzyme that contained each of the four critical mutations (left) and for variants of the evolved enzyme that lacked each of these mutations (right).

Darwinian evolution has been captured as a microchip-based operation, allowing the experimenter to observe and control in real time the adaptation of a population of RNA enzymes. They performed 500 iterations of the cycle in 70 hours, resulting in RNA enzymes that had almost 100 times the biological activity as they decreased the substrate concentration 20 fold. As discussed in the paper, they are nearing the theoretical limits for this particular reaction to take place. So, in less than 3 days, these scientists were able to evolve a molecule that came within a hair of being as optimal as possible. What could be done with thousands of different molecules and millions of years?

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