#microbiology

A row of Erlenmeyer flasks racked on a stainless orbital shaker in a bright incubator room, amber-gold broth swirling mid-orbit in the nearest flask with its surface still climbing one side of the glass

Seventy-Five Thousand Generations of E. coli, and Counting

Twelve flasks, one ancestor, samples frozen every 500 generations that can be revived and re-run. The fitness trajectory still has no measured ceiling, and one population's citrate innovation shows how much history had to happen first.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 30, 2026 · 20 min read

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