You can't stop evolution
#evolution #sciencejournalists #medicalwriters #stem

A paper published in Nature yesterday reports on how an engineered minimal cell contends with the forces of evolution.

Open access paper available here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06288-x

Dr Veera M. Rajagopal on Twitter has a good summary on the development of the minimal genome (the barest minimum of a bacterial genome required for life), which led to the engineering of the minimal cell.

If you're on Twitter, it's available here: https://twitter.com/doctorveera/status/1676734754995961858

According to the Nature paper: even when you reduce a bacterial genome to its absolute minimum where every nucleotide matters, the genome undergoes mutational events generation after generation as much as the non-minimal genome. One simply cannot stop the evolution.