Artificially stripped-back cell is still able to rapidly evolve

By Michael Marshall

An artificial “minimal cell” that has had all but the most essential genes stripped out can evolve just as fast as a normal cell. The finding shows that organisms can rapidly adapt, even with an unnatural genome that provides little flexibility.

“It appears there’s something about life that’s really robust,” says Jay T. Lennon at Indiana University in Bloomington. “We can strip it down to just the bare essentials,” he says, but that doesn’t stop evolution going to work.

Lennon and his team studied …