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Revisiting the Design of the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli

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Abstract

The long-term evolution experiment (LTEE) with Escherichia coli began in 1988 and it continues to this day, with its 12 populations having recently reached 75,000 generations of evolution in a simple, well-controlled environment. The LTEE was designed to explore open-ended questions about the dynamics and repeatability of phenotypic and genetic evolution. Here I discuss various aspects of the LTEE’s experimental design that have enabled its stability and success, including the choices of the culture regime, growth medium, ancestral strain, and statistical replication. I also discuss some of the challenges associated with a long-running project, such as handling procedural errors (e.g., cross-contamination) and managing the expanding collection of frozen samples. The simplicity of the experimental design and procedures have supported the long-term stability of the LTEE. That stability—along with the inherent creativity of the evolutionary process and the emergence of new genomic technologies—provides a platform that has allowed talented students and collaborators to pose questions, collect data, and make discoveries that go far beyond anything I could have imagined at the start of the LTEE.

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Acknowledgements

I thank everyone who has worked with me on the LTEE over the past 35 years, with special thanks to Jeff Barrick for leading it into the future. I also thank Greg Lang and Kerry Geiler-Samerotte for organizing this special issue, Jeff Barrick for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and two reviewers for their useful suggestions on the submitted paper.

Funding

The LTEE is supported by the US National Science Foundation (Grant No. DEB-1951307) and the John Hannah endowment at Michigan State University.

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  1. Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Richard E. Lenski

  2. Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Program, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Richard E. Lenski

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Correspondence to Richard E. Lenski.

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Handling editor: Greg Lang.

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Lenski, R.E. Revisiting the Design of the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli. J Mol Evol 91, 241–253 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-023-10095-3

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