A decades-long experiment growing E. coli
bacteria showed the microbes evolved the ability to eat a new food.
Flasks of the germs turned cloudy when the bacteria ate citrate.
Credit:
Brian Baer and Neerja Hajela
5 comments:
Dylan
said...
This blog was interesting because it taught me all of these different tricks with bacteria. I learned that researchers at Michigan State have been growing the germs in 12 glass flasks for 25 years. I also learned that evolutionary changes don’t pop up overnight they take a while to actually happen. I feel it was helpful to have all of the key words and the definitions at the bottom of the page because if you don't know the meaning of the words it tells you. Also, it said tiny organisms were able to eat a new food named citrate, which I thought was pretty cool.
I think that is so cool that E. coli can now eat citrate. It says in the article that millions and millions of years ago E. coli used to be able to eat citrate, which I thought was really cool. Than it said 1.3 million years ago it lost that ability. I was wondering as soon as I read that, how did they lose it? Did they eat something and explode into even tinier pieces and reproduce like that? Who knows because the article didn't tell you. I agree with Dylan that it is very helpful to have some of the key words at the bottom. It is sciencenewsforkids.com after all!
That was pretty interesting. I learned a bit about bacteria and what it can do. I knew that that evolutionary changes don't happen suddenly, but 25 years! That is 13,000 generations. That would take roughly 250,000 years for a human! It took 25 years for one trick from when they started putting the bacteria in the glass flasks. In 13,000 generations for a human, you would not be able to tell the difference. It is good for them that they learned to eat citrate. That was a very fascinating article.
I think that this article was very interesting. I personally think that how the bacteria stopped eating citrate 1.3 million years ago and now it can do it again is really amazing. I agree with Nick that it didn't take that long for the experiment on 25 years. I also have to agree with Dylan because if you sometimes forget a scientific word you can go to the bottom and it shows you the meaning of the word. We knew about bacteria but we didn't know all of this. All in all this article was really cool.
5 comments:
This blog was interesting because it taught me all of these different tricks with bacteria. I learned that researchers at Michigan State have been growing the germs in 12 glass flasks for 25 years. I also learned that evolutionary changes don’t pop up overnight they take a while to actually happen. I feel it was helpful to have all of the key words and the definitions at the bottom of the page because if you don't know the meaning of the words it tells you. Also, it said tiny organisms were able to eat a new food named citrate, which I thought was pretty cool.
I think that is so cool that E. coli can now eat citrate. It says in the article that millions and millions of years ago E. coli used to be able to eat citrate, which I thought was really cool. Than it said 1.3 million years ago it lost that ability. I was wondering as soon as I read that, how did they lose it? Did they eat something and explode into even tinier pieces and reproduce like that? Who knows because the article didn't tell you. I agree with Dylan that it is very helpful to have some of the key words at the bottom. It is sciencenewsforkids.com after all!
That was pretty interesting. I learned a bit about bacteria and what it can do. I knew that that evolutionary changes don't happen suddenly, but 25 years! That is 13,000 generations. That would take roughly 250,000 years for a human! It took 25 years for one trick from when they started putting the bacteria in the glass flasks. In 13,000 generations for a human, you would not be able to tell the difference. It is good for them that they learned to eat citrate. That was a very fascinating article.
I think that this article was very interesting. I personally think that how the bacteria stopped eating citrate 1.3 million years ago and now it can do it again is really amazing. I agree with Nick that it didn't take that long for the experiment on 25 years. I also have to agree with Dylan because if you sometimes forget a scientific word you can go to the bottom and it shows you the meaning of the word. We knew about bacteria but we didn't know all of this. All in all this article was really cool.
Since we have been doing so much on bacteria, I wasn't a big fan of this blog post.
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