Equation 1 · Part 3 · Seventy-Five Thousand Generations of E. coli, and Counting
Symbol a
What this part means
a occurs above the fraction bar. The numerator is divided by the entire denominator below it.
Its job in the formula
a occurs above the fraction bar. The numerator is divided by the entire denominator below it.
Full expression→Symbol a→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
Against that record, Wiser, Ribeck and Lenski fit fitness trajectories from all twelve populations across 50,000 generations against two competing functional shapes for how relative fitness might grow with time. One is a form that saturates — fitness rising quickly at first and then flattening toward a fixed asymptote, the kind of ceiling a “diminishing returns” reading of Lenski’s 1991 result would predict. The other is a power-law form, with no fixed limit: growth continues indefinitely, at an ever-slowing rate…
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A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.
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Sources cited in the article section
- [3] Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli ↗
- [14] They're back! ↗
- [2] Long-Term Dynamics of Adaptation in Asexual Populations ↗
- [13] The E. Coli Long-Term Evolution Experiment Is The Longest-Running Study Of Its Kind, And It's Been Going For 80,000 Generations ↗
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.