Near Instantaneous Evolution Discovered in Bacteria

Updated July 7, 2017 This content is archived.

Research by Mark R. O’Brian, PhD,  professor and chair of biochemistry, has led to a four-year, $1.28 million grant to study how bacteria mutate to accept iron, and how the organism expels excess iron. "We usually think of evolution taking place over a long period of time, but we're seeing evolution — at least as the ability to use an iron source that it couldn't before — occurring as a single mutation in the cell that we never would have predicted," he said.