Evolution happens every day, and it affects every species including us. In fact, it's the source of a topic in the daily news: antibiotic resistance. Some bacteria have an evolutionary edge over others and, as a result, flourish in the presence of antibiotics while antibiotic-sensitive bacteria perish.
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a component of the National Institutes of Health, supports a wide range of basic research in evolutionary biology. A few recent findings are described below.
Got Milk?
If you're lactose intolerant, you're not alone most of the world's adults can't digest this sugar found in milk. African tribal people who took up cattle herding thousands of years ago are an interesting exception. Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Maryland discovered that natural selection for lactose tolerance was so strong that it evolved independently in three distinct rural African populations. Lactose tolerance enabled people to drink cow's milk during droughts and survive to produce more offspring who also carried the trait.
Staying Ahead of HIV
The HIV virus evolves very quickly, changing its genes to outwit medicines and the immune system. Making matters worse, people infected with HIV often carry many types of the virus each one possibly resistant against a different drug. Feng Gao of Duke University developed a test that finds drug-resistant HIV in the blood before treatment fails, potentially enabling doctors to intervene more quickly.
Say It Again, Gene
Don't be alarmed, but our genome is a cluttered mess thanks in large part to evolutionary processes that allow DNA sequences to repeat themselves. Evan Eichler of the University of Washington in Seattle wanted to find order in the genomic jumble. He used a form of calculus to develop a framework for reconstructing the evolutionary history of human genome reorganizations. By tracing the path of gene copying over time, the work offers a new window into understanding how diseases develop.
The Shape of Proteins Past
Joseph Thornton of the University of Oregon used computational and biochemical methods to resurrect a protein hundreds of millions of years old and determine its atomic structure, revealing in unprecedented detail the evolution of the molecule's structure and function. This is the first time researchers have reproduced an ancestral protein and determined its atomic structure, essentially traveling 450 million years in time to observe evolution in action.
NIH, National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
45 Center Dr. MSC 6200
Bethesda, MD 20892-6200
United States