Absolutely loving these videos man. Keep up the grind!!!

Hello techsource👋🙂

wow didn't expect techsource here!

Potato

What is secksource doing here

The Prof is such an engaging speaker! I could hear him talk science all day

This professor is frighteningly good at explaining and keeping his audience engaged. I can see why he spoke for most of the video, and how there seems to be minimal cuts / editing of footage. Amazing! Thoroughly enjoyed grasping new concepts from listening to him.

Agreed! I was utterly engrossed!

I think he might either have some familiarity with storytelling concepts, or just read a lot and have an intuitive understanding. Because the way he described both the two ways they expected the bacteria to evolve (one unlikely event causing it means it could've happened at any time vs many unlikely events leading up to the evolution means it couldn't have happened any sooner than it did) and how he described the differences between the Rectangular Hyperbola and Power Law models reminded me a lot of how the plots of stories play out. Maybe I'm looking into it too far, but the parallels sort of jumped out at me, and it would make sense that turning abstract data into a kind of story would be more appealing to a layperson. Regardless I absolutely agree with you, I was thoroughly engrossed watching this.

Why is it frightening?

@@benjaminroodenburg2999 It isn't. It's figurative. Exaggerated for effect.

@@Triairius exaggeration of the word scary? Why would it be scary in any kind of way? It being figurative would mean it has something in common with the emotion he’s trying to convey. I don’t think fear was the intended emotion. If I destroy someone in chess I can call it a massacre. Meaning that the opposition had not chance whatsoever. That would be the correlation, but I can’t see such a thing return in his wording.

Imagine one of these days one colony forms a multicellular structure. Or 'cannibalise' but not really and form a structure similar to mitochondria or chloroplast. That would be sooo cool.

Underrated comment

Multicellular bacteria would be so cool! And hopefully it would be vastly better at survival so the other bacteria would have to evolve to keep up. And then so on and so one. I guess the ultimate goal would be to evolve some kind of complex multicellular organism. Perhaps with organs like a brain, or something new and so far unimaginable. It might seem impossible in an environment like this, but we are here somehow, and that fact seems impossible too! Damn this stuff is so fascinating!

@@GamePhysics agreed. Though it took 4 billion years to get to our point. So we would have to keep this going for a long time. Probably not as long as 4 billion cuz IRL we had mass extinction events which basically 'reset' whereas we can just protect the bacteria here. But it would still be a long while. Yea it is really fascinating

@@mysticvitriol I have no clue exactly how long it took to get complexity like the first fish, but could possibly take a lot shorter than 4 billion years. A change in environment can force evolution to occur much fast than you might think. Not saying its going to be fast, but let's say they took some of the bacteria and tried changing the environment to provoke certain evolutionary traits. Would definitely be interesting!

@@GamePhysics yeah

Wonderful. I felt like a 5 year old learning something new about my world.

Triple thumbs up.

I felt like I was just told there are thousands of people and labs that have no problem risking me and my family's existence

@@philobetto5106 There is no risk to your existence. There's no need to spread unnecessary panic.

​@@philobetto5106it literally said in the video that it was controlled environment and the evolution rate actually slower than the one currently on your body because there is less pressure. You didn't even watch or understood the video

The world of bacteria and archaea is really different. Trust me when i say i was stunned when my professor said “We have more bacterial cells in our body than our cells” on my first microbiology class. Their world teaches us the ‘will to survive’ in any condition

Hello there, you handsome looking container of a brazillion microorganisms how about we .... ... meh. - I find my way out.

This has been proven wrong

​@@EredilElexi OK, you made a claim, provide evidence.

@@EredilElexi Nah, it's true. Those bacterium though compared to the size of one human cell are relatively small though. So, in terms of mass of these cells we are majority human.

What an absolutely astounding experiment I’ve never heard of. Hopefully we can keep it going

You can keep going forever, but in the end they will still only be bacteria!

@@NoName-ii8xj not quite, If there was a point in which the E. coli evolved to “eat” something different of glucose, which never happened outside of the experiment, maybe if we keep it going long enough, there will be a time in which they become a new organism that we have never seen before.

@@viniciusmachado8962 The ability of life to adapt is truly a marvel, but there is no justification to claim bacteria will ever adapt their way into a new organism. There is simply no empirical evidence to show this is possible.

@@jon__doe how exactly do you think we got as many different species of living beings today if not evolution, that has been proved in this experiment, and a single common ancestor between every living being?

Derek, I’m so happy that you’re finally coming around to the superiority of biology above all other sciences, welcome to the squad 😂 (love this story, I’ve been following it since grad school)

Biology no, physics is where it's at (This is a joke)

no

Physics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey Joe (mama)

That was fantastic! I'm not particularly biology-minded but the way he engaged with the subject and described the experiment had me glued to my monitor.

I learnt of this experiment many decades ago. It is amazing to see an update, and to learn of the new evolutionary leap forward into citrate digestion. I wonder if we'll ever see something like the bacteria becoming multicellular.

I'm a year late seeing this video, it is an amazingly well done educational/informative. My dad passed away a year ago, he would have loved this video. The professor remids me of him very much. Thank you, keep up the great work.

I'm a huge plant nerd, and since I've gone beyond 50 plants on my 50 square meters, I've always been struggling with thrips infestations. Being less educated on both biology and botany than I am now, I first tried to get rid of them just by brushing them off and using household pesticides. The thrips very quickly adapted to the pesticides, so much so that I had to vastly increase the amount I was using to the point of drenching my plants' leaves so much that they became sticky and ugly, and when that stopped working (this is at most half a year after I started) I kinda just gave up and just brushed them off whenever I found them. Unfortunately, eventually, the thrips evolved to adjust to my specific plant culture, which is around 2/5ths succulents, so that's what they started to get a taste for, and at that point, their population exploded. I had gathered a little more plant parenting knowledge since then (especially just how important lots of light is), so my plants were generally healthier and stronger, but no household plant is strong enough to resist an army of thrips. I started using green lacewing larvae, which are the thrips' only (easily purchasable) direct natural predator, plus californicus nematodes both on leaves and in the soil. Applying four courses worth 250€ over three months got rid of most of the thrips, and since then I apply another two rounds (~75€ each) of larvae & nematodes about three times a year, which is keeping them in check. Being at just under 200 plants on still 50 square meters right now, I don't think I'm ever getting completely rid of them. It was deeply fascinating and awesome to see evolution and darwinism happening right in my own home. Botanically, it's also so, so terrifying. In most industrial countries, thrips especially are a huge problem, with not a single pesticide providing reliable resistance against them. As I could easily see in my own place, their evolutionary process starts adapting within months. Fortunately, the natural food chain is an obstacle darwinism has a much harder time to jump than environmental conditions (which I'd count pesticides under), so for now, I'm probably gonna be okey.

This was really fascinating to read thanks for sharing. Currently I would say the thrips and their predators that you have introduced are in an evolution battle in your garden. Just as the thrips become better at surviving against the pesticides they also become better at surviving against the predators (at a much slower rate) but this time the predators are also evolving, making them a better solution to pesticides which don't really change except for the concentration and amount used.

Things get smarter and stronger and adapt to environments. But isn't Darwinism evolution about changing KINDS? The thrips are still thrips.

​@@cheerfulmouseNot really, Darwinism just says thta the weak die and the strong (or better adapted), live , so every new generation is better adapted thrn the old one

@@mitkokatrandviev9912 yet people continue to insert the assumption that a change of KINDS has ever happened, using Darwin's Theory

@@mitkokatrandviev9912 it's assumed that there's a change of KINDS happening. Which is why it needs to stop being used as a Good argument.

Ive got a jar of pond water that has been sealed since the 18th of Jan 2018. Its reallying interesting seeing the fluctuation in the ostracod population each year. I always wonder if they are genetically distinct from wild populations. Would love to crack it open in like 40 years and see the kind of genetic variation to wild populations

By then, it might be... yaknow.... dead?

His team has been doing this for 33 years and not missed a single day? Now that’s commitment.

just wait until something like a new pandemic forces them to close the lab for a week. They come back and find some of the bacteria began eating each other and became superbacteria large enough to escape their dishes! :-P

You underestimate the power of money. His "team" would definitely have young people who are doing it for the money

@@SF-li9kh thats a sad world you are living in :(

@@SF-li9kh yes, we need money to survive? Doesn’t mean they’re not also doing because they find it fascinating. Actually, I don’t think they would be doing it at all if they didn’t find it fascinating

@@SurgStriker I just imagined the slap, where the slapper is the bacteria and he slaps every scientist coming into the lab

This is freaking amazing! Counting by hand when you have cameras and computers seems a bit oldschool, but I can respect the ritual.

They should've just filled the observable universe with E Coli. That would be so badass.

an e. coli wrote this

It was generation 100 billion, replying using evolved time travel.

Would be cool to see another video like this with Will Ratcliff who is doing a similar experiment with yeast to unravel the evolution of multicellularity. Sean Carroll did a podcast interview with Will which I highly recommend on Mindscape, but I'd like to see the Veritasium treatment to get more animations and visuals of the experiments.

That professor's passion and the way he explained things made me more interested in science than anything else has before. Very understandable.

God I love science. My hat is off to everyone involved in the project, and similar projects. A rather dull daily work, eventually giving answers we can barely dream of. Absolutely fascinating.

The professor is so good at explaining what they do and what they have found!

asioe kiou +1

Wish my engineering professors had the same level of understanding with explaining a topic 🤣

This is WHY he's had funding to keep this running for 33 years. Communication matters.

@@aaronwilson5396 Any good propagandist will tell you that.

Damn, that professor is so amazing, I'd sit on a radioactive container and eat polonium just to hear him explain genetics and biology, even a short plutonium tea party would be great! So much enthusiasm, so much knowledge, and incredible communication skills. He had me fn hooked

This experiment is helping to refine the theory of evolution and is raising and answering really interesting questions. Great work.

Absolutely amazing. It’s the kind of science you might not even consider, but to be able to quantify evolution….just imagine the things humans could achieve if we can just avoid destroying ourselves first

The methods of the experiment really show how old it is. Like all that exachaning fluids by hand, analyzing with colours, counting by hand... Still very impressive that he had the resilience to keep it going.

Appreciate your videos a lot. These videos can teach you more in 15 minutes than an entire semester-long course. Very well put together.

As a human biologist, I think there are also astonishing examples of rapid evolution in humans. To give an example, a mutation occurred roughly 20 000 years ago in Europe which made people lactose tolerant. Since lactose tolerance supported survival during repeated periods of starvation, it rapidly spread to different populations and contributed to greater population growth (I made a video about this ). This mutation was so successful that we can find it in the majority of all people of European descent today!

Tell it to my lactose free groceries

So basically everyone who is lactose tolerant has one common ancestor?

Wait tolerant or intolerant?

@@Theolinooo sounds about right

@@Theolinooo If you lactose intolerant you aint trve evropean

I would hope that this team have been also spending the past 33 years coming up with a design so that this process could be automated. Sure would help to allow 100s of other automated selection processes run e.g. selecting for color, selecting for acidity, selecting for survivability under condition X,Y,Z.

This was mind blowing and jaw dropping. It gives me a whole new view on evolution.

The patience and commitment of these scientists is just blowing my mind ! Imagine you are observing same bacteria for 33 years . This person spend his whole life on this for the good of humanity . King 👑

Veritasium's videos are always great, but 'bacteria Fight Club' took it to the next level. Bravo!

So fascinating and great testament to the dedication of the professor. I did start to wonder if despite the extremely controlled environment there are in fact some uncontrolled aspects influencing evolution. For example, if the lab techs tend to select solution from the bottom of the flask could they be selecting for bacteria that tends to grow under greater pressure? Not suggesting this is the case and such a hypothesis could be confounded by a systematic shaking of the flask but anyway, just a thought-provoking experiment/video all around.

I love how Dr. Lenski is really happy and visibly proud of the work he and his team has done, while at the same time giving a very humble and down to earth aura.

He seems so passionate about the project, I'm happy for him :). This experiment was actually on an old biology exam I took.

What a total waste of a persons life. At the end of the experiment with all that time and money your learned basically nothing.

@@ugetridofit Everyone has different goals/interests in life. It may not seem interesting to you, but others might find it interesting to watch evolution take place.

@@Fractal_32 agreed. I found this very interesting. Especially how they are able to go back and have the older generations compete with the newer ones.

@@ugetridofit i hope you realize i can see all ur comments. Not 1 on this channel is positive.

Great enthusiastic scientist. You can tell that he has his whole heart into this project. Thank you.

Very fortunate is the man (person) who loves his job!

Insightful. Just like those bacteria, incremental improvements are made, always; but breakthroughs were only made once a long while. The team did just that, persist long enough to witness one of those breakthroughs. The breakthrough witnessed certainly changes the way I see things. I was imagining how would the team have reacted to the announcement of the covid lock-downs? I suppose, instead of the fear of contracting covid, they are probably thinking "oh, my germ experiment has to keep going!" Huge commitment, huge achievement, power of persistence + time.

I just read The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins, who outlined this exact experiment. It was amazing to have it vusialized and brought to life here. Thank you for sharing 🙂

Nice Video 💦 Nice to know that these bacteria (test objects from nature) change in a closed environment and that is "naturally" checked in this laboratory. Have they also tested it with other conditions like light and nutrition that anyone knows? Greetzz MiKa

I've just heard the news about the 20+ years research on the Rensselaer institute destroyed by an annoyed janitor. I thought it was referring to this experiment so i came back to check it out. Thank god it is still running

People miss that the opening video of the Antibacterial-Resistant Bacteria showcases exactly why you shouldn’t overuse antibiotics.

Don't forget not underusing antibiotics when you are prescribed them. Finish your prescriptions friends.

What about hand sanitizers and soap?

@@burgerman101 Hand sanitizers and soap chemically tear apart bacteria and microbes, antibiotics mess with their basic processes. They will continue to work as long as the basics of chemistry remain constant.

Would you say that it's just limited to antibiotics? Or perhaps more generally, environmental stressors. .. dare I say... Even a new type of vaccine that acts on rna

@@moonrooster7160 over using antibiotics and questioning the efficacy of a vaccine are entirely different issues.

That would be an experiment worth doing, even if others see it as un-needed knowing why or how evolution takes place and what can come of it can lead to a very important branch of knowledge and hopefully let us understand our own evolution. I do hope their team keeps the experiment running as they chose a medium that evolves far quicker then humans, so it will give far more data. I just hope more interesting data comes out of it in the long run.

WOAH! Pure chance, but as soon as I heard citrate was in the solution I thought to myself that that would be a secondary carbon source and that they'd oughtta keep an eye on it. Awesome!

This is really interesting, because I always imagined evolution as something that just happens. It can be accelerated by events and co-evolution, but it will happen all the time regardless, just by chance. But there seem to be a lot of people put there who can't or won't understand that more or less mathematical part of evolution. I had a discussion in a reddit grou about closed natural ecospheres and that there are some out there which lasted for several decades as of now. And one user wondered if evolution in a closed jar, just getting light as an energy source from the outside will be possible. And for some reason there where two diffrent train of thoughts present within the commentors. One that was unsure, but liked to play with the idea that life in those jars would be able to evolve and adapt. And the other - for some reason bigger - group that absolutly dismissed this idea, as there would be no way of mutating (because there aren't any mutagens or competition happening). But competition doesn't mean predation and they totally forgot that mutation don't necessarily need mutagens, just chance to happen. So there would be no reason not to think that all this algae and bacteria and coepods would not evolve. Sure, they would not start a civilization. But they will adapt to that stable, limited envronment just like the E. Coli did. I guess.

there is competition still? in this instance, the bacteria compete against eachother in the race against time. food isn't the limiting factor. it's time and space. what do you think?

That's incredible! At first, I really didn't think this would be very interesting, but it sure is a good thing that guy kept the project going.

Thank you, I very much appreciated your investigation into this one aspect of Evolution.

You can tell that this professor really is interested in what he is doing.

Sometimes I get a kind of a contact high from seeing people obsessed with what they're talking about, especially if it drives them to some achievement. (Healthy level of obsession, or otherwise) and this reminded me of that. "Man on Wire" popped into my mind. Also some random video of an oceanographer or similar, talking about a weird type of current he saw while scuba diving... it completely had me gripped. But I saw this 10 or 15 years ago, and have not been able to find it since.

@@FlyNAA if someone is truly interested in their subject and passionate about it, they can often make it appear much more interesting than one would expect, it's honestly always a pleasure to see those people.

You wouldn't devote your life to academia if you weren't. It certainly isn't done for the money.

@@zeuskf62 Indeed. Half of the scientific topics I'm interested in now, I'm interested in because of passionate school teachers. It seems like having teachers who don't really enjoy what they're doing do horrible damage to kids' future interests, as I've noticed from asking the question about where an interest/disinterest stems from way too many times.

@@FlyNAA I had a professor like this in college. Never seen someone more interested in statistical models than that man... He got me so fired up to learn, his passion and enthusiasm were so infectious. He took a leave of absence for a few weeks during the semester and the adjunct that came in was ok, not bad, but didn't have nearly his passion and the class just lost it's luster. Amazing how infectious passion and enthusiasm are in academia and really just all spheres of life.

beautiful video and the Professor is just what we need in our community.

Derek, keep on telling us those beautiful stories. They are truly inspiring! Thanks

I love Veritasium's videos. I just can't think about anything else while being glued to my screen and then I realize how much time has passed.

I saw this video around when it came out, but I didn't comment then. It popped back into my recommended though! So happy to see the cool things the professors at my University can accomplish! And since it's been a year since I left MSU it was nice to see the locations I frequented in the background of the video. :)

Wow. This is an incredible experiment! So freaking cool!

This video is a great example of why we should never stop funding basic science.

Exactly the opposite. They are doing nothing useful.

​@@robertmccully2792 Fine everyone who doesn't want to fund basic science can move to their own country. Everyone else here can enjoy the bounties of knowledge about how life evolved. Cause you're kind of forgetting that knowledge about how life has evolved has helped us treat numerous genetic diseases. But sure, let's ignore that.

@@robertmccully2792 I mean this sort of stuff might help us on how to stop super-bugs but yeah lets stop science and go fund some inefficient federal welfare instead of getting states to do it and making super-bugs more prevalent.

@@robertmccully2792 They're actually doing very important research which has direct application in several industries as well as healthcare, and opens the door to further research opportunities. What's doing nothing useful is our failed education system which produce far and away too many citizens who have absolutely no grasp of basic science.

Outstanding. Where else would a man like this professor get the time and opportunity to explain, IN HIS WORDS, what he and his colleagues are doing?? Very good indeed.

But if the only significant change in 74500 generations is a small variation in what these bacteria digest, the logical conclusion is that there did not happen much evolution at all. If that represents 1.1 million years in humans, in what way does it confirm human evolution?

@@s.unosson i mean, humans are made of more complex genetics and more compex variables and are already a super adaptive species. So comparing bacteria:humans won't really line up it's just a generational amount comparison, and not what happend.

Fascinating stuff, as usual. Thanks! 👍

This video is great and all but I'm finding the fact that there are so many people in the comments agreeing that it's great and not just outright rejecting evolution to be even better. Too often do I see people rejecting basic scientific known facts and seeing so many people learning and enjoying science is absolutely incredible. Also love the videos, while Derek might get some things wrong occasionally, he's still great at keeping us engaged and interested in even obscure topics like FFTs, and oil refining(video on Midglet).

Couldn't take my eyes off. Amazing things never more eloquently described. Thanks!

I like how the researcher at the end gets so excited by the extrapolation power of his power curve. Still, a profound finding.

When people are as passionate as Prof. Richard Lenski, you can't help but want to learn/ hear more

He has a wonderful mind.

Sad that such passion is under full-scale assault in the West.

@@JohnDoe-bi5cc how so?

is it Richard Lenski?

So many questions... I wish I had a direct line to Prof. Lenski. I am curious if he hypothesizes that there is a singular "best-fit" model of DNA for the bacteria in the study. Is the growth medium controlled tightly enough for this to even be feasible? Is it possible to reach that singularity? How long might it take?

My impression is that it is not only so that the copying method makes different errorrs (mutations), so that the organism can adapt to new environments, it is also so that the copying mechanism fluctuates, varies in the number of errors it makes. In times of a stable environment, the variants that produce only a small number of errors are favoured, as they keep the variations around the optimally adapted form of the organism small. But this error number variation may never stop fluctuating, because in the moment a bigger change of the environment occurs, you need the ability to quickly broaden the width of variations to "find" a quick solution for the new environment; and when the adaptation is complete, the low-range variation will become stronger again.

Even in the absence of an environmental change, there are so many opportunities of smaller and smaller magnitude to continue to make progress that in fact progress would probably NEVER stop even in a constant environment. So much understanding in one sentence...

Yes, it's how we evolved from bacteria-like progenitors, and how further evolution will produce even better adaptable organisms millions of years in the future, if we survive current and future challenges at all.

This channel is awesome! Even the people you interview are so passionate

Wait so are you telling me, if we had enough solution we could fill the Universe with life in 42 days?! I know it's not exactly that simple but that's pretty mind blowing!

It is that simple. With enough solution anything is possible

Well, at a certain point the limit would be m/s that the bacteria can cross at a time limiting the propagation of the blob.

I hope this team gets recognised for the way in which they have experimentally proven some of the postulates we take for granted, in Biology. Keeping a Biology experiment running for 33 years, with constant monitoring of conditions, is no joke.

We already knew species can adapt to environments. It's called natural selection acting on existing biological information. No new revelation there. Nothing changed with the bacteria other than losing traits and becoming less fit to survive in that bottle neck.

@@MrLaughingcorpse This experiment has provided unparalleled information, actually. It has provided a wealth of information about evolution. We have no information such as this controlled experiment of evolution on ANY organism. Do you think we understand evolution? Because despite all we know, we do not understand it. In fact, natural selection and evolution as we understand it have been fundamentally questioned by some of the worlds foremost experts on a broad range of related topics. Mostly because of the unaccountability of evolutionary time constraints just prior to the Cambrian explosion, but many other reasons as well.

bodoti qwiu I'd say we are already in a horror film with the covid going on

@@MrLaughingcorpseNothing has changed of course and yes, this is no new revelation. But the fact that this experiment has allowed us to witness the very mechanism behind Natural Selection in action - and put it through vigorous testing - is something extraordinary. This is the closest we can get to actually "seeing" Evolution and it is only possible in simple organisms like Bacteria. We have very limited hopes of seeing similiar things, across so many generations, in higher organisms.

@@SolidSiren No evolution happened though. Pretty much the opposite. They lost functions in order to survive. I would say that the problem of no one understanding evolution is that it does not and can't happen in just nature. Species producing variety within their species, due to natural selection working with existing information and systems, yes. That isn't evolution though. The video above is misleading people.

It is so nice to hear people lifes observations and experiences in science. Powerfull stuff. I learned so much. :)

I wanted to know more about the bacteria strain that learned to consume the citrate. What were the mutations required to do that? Doesn't that require a whole host of new enzymes that in turn require thousands upon thousands of random iterations before they finally start doing "the thing"? It can't have all been just a single mutation...

That team who's been doing this for over 30 years is amazing

At first I thought the fluorescent material would move with the bacteria as in a local pattern. I didn’t realize there’d be this symbiotic relationship with humans…

Excellent video to show HS student on natural selection. The professor is Richard Lenski, Hannah Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University. He has a great website on this topic and others along with videos.

he was so happy to tell someone about his experiment, made my heart warm xD

I know that pfp lol

@@LittleLightUwU sauce? Pls?

@@astra8308 what is the sauce?

@srinivasula bhagat xD doesn't mean laugh

My only question is whether each penetration was 1 strain (weird for 1 strain to share its genetics across all of a given band, but bacteria gene exchange is weird, too) or several.

This video was super cool!! Would love to see more videos on the mechanics of evolution

because it doesn't exist

wot m8

This video (along with other interesting Veritasium videos) inspired me to go back to school. It's been a year and a half later and now I'm working in the lab in my college, plating bacteria everyday. It's wild how much more I understand now. This video still blows my mind.

Cool experiment. My only concern is if human error can be produced faster than bacteria mutation. Too much lab work not to mess it up and contaminate once.

I don't care how many times I watched veritasium videos they always blow my mind

I could listen to Prof. Richard Lenski talk about evolution for hours. I love hearing someone passionately talk about something they love.

Fully agree, he is really passionate about this. I can imagine that it is really hard for him to talk about this in real life. People that do not understand the subject or are not interested.

True

There is definitely an asymptote to the expansion rate of the bacteria… They can't go faster than the speed of light! :D (Or maybe they'll evolve superhuman intelligence and develop wormhole technology? I think at that point there might be some objections against the experiment from the general public.)

I can't believe the Bounty sponsor, and the fact that they are the one product I dont like living without. IDK why anybody would buy the cheaper towels unless out of absolute ignorance and necessity. Cheaper towels actually end up costing more. I use them in my lab, so thr importance to me is probably amplified over others. Thanks for choosing a quality product that makes life better (Though I wish there was a way around product placement). And thanks for such a quality topic... it is an important edu. Go Darwin!!!😂

This is one of the greatest most fascinating things I've ever seen. Thank you for this wonderful knowledge.

I have to imagine that these bacteria are getting really good at replicating fast in ideal conditions.

This experiment is very informative and provides a lot of data on adaptation over generations, but the COVID-19 pandemic pretty much recreated the experiment, except with humanity as the petri dish. Essentially, with the high human population, and especially the high density living in cities, humans created a situation where the virus had an incredibly high rate of transmission and access to new energy sources when they colonised a person, which allowed the virus to spread and mutate at an exponential rate.  Admittedly, it;s a bit different from the experiment, because the immune system (and later, the vaccines) challenged the colonisation and persistence of the virus within each individual human, and each human had a slightly different assortment of genes that could impact the virus's environmental parameters, but it's pretty similar. Only density of living and protocols for pandemic management (like masks and social distancing) would alter the external circumstances. Well, It's very interesting scientifically, but I'd rather our governments learn from this how easy it is for human communities to become petri dishes for pathogenic microbes, and how to prevent disease clusters from mirroring this experiment. ...Or more accurately: why to listen to their virology and epidemiology experts *cough*

A wise man once said: "Life finds a way."

Hello there

E

How are you everywhere?

Here after someone mentions you are everywhere

Hello

Kudos on your hand-held steady cam, very clean. You might like using a monopod in situations like that, that rig looks heavy! Thanks for all you do.

Thank you for sharing this with the world.

I think it’s worth it, having an entire universe populated mostly by e.coli and solution. It would certainly give a large sampling population!

Does anyone know if they were able to replicate the bacteria gaining the ability to metabolize the citrate?

Interesting video! From information in the video, the stated most favorable mutation rate of deleterious:advantageous mutations = 500,000:1000/flask/day or 500 deleterious mutations for every 1 advantageous mutation/day. GIven this 500:1 rate of damage to the DNA, how many generations can the e-coli populations survive?

It is so incredibly satisfying to hear a relaxed researcher talk. Great interview!

I agree. It would have been totally different if he was talking in the lab

You might like the youtuber The Thought Emporium in that case.

Idk how hes so relaxed knowing hes growing literal super ecoli

His last statement has me wondering if, since the E. Coli are in a constant environment and have evolved to feed on the two available sources of carbon, could future iterations eventually begin to feed on each other (since there's no other source of food available) if they continue the experiment??

I really do hope that there will be someone from his team to continue this experiment as his legacy after he has passed some day in the hopefully far future. This is groundbreaking science, and I am pretty sure we haven't even seen everything yet.

The fact the it took so long to use carbon from a different source makes me think that was the same when life was formed. Maybe it took a bit of a time because there was some unknown condition that neeeded to be required first. Maybe some day, scientists will know what condition that would be. Or maybe not.

easiest condition would be a meteor brought them or something lol

@@user-wy6pb8ek1d I think that's an absurd claim. There's no known life in the Solar system outside of Earth. To think that an interstellar meteor not only went through the Solar system but hit Earth itself (the most habitable planet out of the eight) is just really unlikely. Not only that, but this life would have to leave its original planet and survive through space. I don't see that happening. It's a possibility, but definitely not easiest.

@@israel.s.garcia yep, just the first thing that came into mind.

Imagine a huge warehouse with robots doing all these experiments on their own and publishing all this data on the internet. How fast we could discover things if only we had labs and all our experiments were as easy as clicking some buttons or if complex just programming them to the computer.

Has anyone ever thought of colony counting with software to which the images of the samples are subjected?

That freezing bacteria technique, sounds like a Git for biologists.

Just my thoughts! When they showed the bacterial crematorium I was like "shame they throw it all away, would be kinda nice if they could somehow save the state of the experiment every now and again"... turns out they can and do!

Woww true dat! And when something get messy they go like git reset --hard

Yup, git is and freezing are time machines in a way.

"I'm now going to use Git bisect to find out exactly when that bug was introduced."

I dont like theory of evolution exist it is wrong science

At Kyoto University an experiment with flies raised in complete darkness began in 1954 and has now surpassed 1500 generations of them.

Brilliant presentation, very incitefull, evolution is a fascinating topic.

The reason why the fitness function does not seem to converge to a limit is that the gene combination space is extremely large and your populations have not found the global optimum of the fitness function yet. To show this first note that even though the gene combination space is large it is finite which means that it is enumerable in finite time. If your conditions are kept at a constant the populations will sooner or later find the global optimum and remain dominant ever after, hence the limit of the fitness function is reached.

The conclusion on never ending improvement would be interesting to put in perspective by comparing the robustness/adaptability to other environments of the ancestors versus specialized offsprings. Is the most evolved also the most fragile ??

In this case yes. They are surviving in a flask that is swirling and food provided. The e-coli didn’t need flagella to move so lost it. It actually just keeps loosing bits and genes. It only survives better than the less broken version because in the flask it doesn’t need those bits and spends less energy making and maintaining them. In a different environment the less broken ones would dominate again.

Now I'm wondering if you can model these populations with a logistic map in some way...

That was a stunningly good interview as it was edited to have Richard doing almost all the talking with Derek providing essential background.

I wish that they could trace bacterial haplotypes from this experiment. This could clarify some of our assumptions about human haplogroups.

7:57 looks like a -80°C freezer to me. Also, Veritasium channel and Derek are really, really on the top level of Youtube science vids.

I explained this experiment in a debate about evolution and my friend responded with "Well those are just stupid prokaryotes, they're not humans!".