accelerated evolution
With astonishment (and envy) we often watch how nifty and elegant nature is at tackling its challenges. After billions of years of evolution, nature has learnt what works, what works best, what lasts …
As we face some serious complex challenges of our own (e.g. finding an alternative for oil) however, we realize we do not have the time to ‘evolve’ a solution in the same way or ‘copy-paste’ a solution found in nature to our field of application as it is. The environment sets the pace for evolutionary change … As we gain ever more grip on chemical and biological processes, however, it has always been only a matter of time before we would try to tinker with the process and speed of evolution itself.
Scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School laboratory, recently succeeded in using accelerated evolution to develop a new enzyme, an RNA ligase that catalyzes a reaction joining two types of RNA chains. A forward look leads one to note that :
“Evolution by selection between whole organisms is too slow a way to turn up better designs. Computer simulations and automated lab equipment that generates more real life variations of proteins will some day allow us to search much more deeply through the space of all possible protein shapes to turn up much better genes. In order to give ourselves higher performing bodies we will some day replace some human genes with variants found in labs.”
See also the example of cellulosic ethanol or cellulosic biofuels in general, where we are challenged to produce enzymes to break down cellulose cheaply enough at an industrial scale and speed. Different approaches under investigation include genetic engineering a supermicrobe to do the job, use directed evolution to ‘improve’ upon existing microorganisms that produce such enzymes naturally, search the planet for better micro-workhorses. Wired notes:
“It’s bio-construction versus bio-tinkering versus bio-prospecting, all with the single goal of creating the perfect enzyme cocktail.”
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