Richard E. Lenski

John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor

Ph.D., University of North Carolina, 1982

2209 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building
Office Telephone: 517-353-6463
lenski@msu.edu
Research website

Ecology, Genetics, Evolutionary Biology

I am interested in the ecological processes and genetic mechanisms that cause evolutionary change. I study microorganisms in order to take advantage of their rapid generations and large populations, which make it feasible to test evolutionary hypotheses by direct experimentation.

In one project that has been on-going for more than ten years, my students and I are studying the adaptation and divergence of bacterial populations, while they evolve in a defined laboratory environment for more than 20,000 generations. We seek to understand the dynamics of these evolutionary processes as well as the ecological, physiological, and genetic changes that are responsible for the substantial gains in fitness that we observe.

In other projects, we use bacteria and the viruses and plasmids that infect them as model systems for studying the ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions. Yet other projects are concerned with the spread of antibiotic resistance, the evolution of mutation rates, the form and extent of interactions among mutations, life in variable environments, and costs and benefits of primitive sociality in bacteria.

I have also recently begun research on the evolution of artificial life, in the form of self- replicating computer programs that mutate at random, compete for CPU time, and thereby adapt by natural selection to become faster and more efficient replicators.

Representative Publications

Misevic, D., C. Ofria, and R.E. Lenski. 2006. Sexual reproduction reshapes the genetic architecture of digital organisms. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London B 273: 457-464.

Lenski, R. E. 2006. E. coli as a model organism in evolutionary genetics. Pp. 485-487 in C.W.Fox and J.B. Wolf, eds. Evolutionary Genetics: Concepts and Case Studies. Oxford University Press, New York.

Woods, R., D. Schneider, C.L. Winkworth, M.A. Riley, and R.E. Lenski. 2006. Tests of parallel molecular evolution in a long-term experiment with Escherichia coli. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 103: 9107-9112.

Novak, M., T. Pfeiffer, R.E. Lenski, U. Sauer, and S. Bonhoeffer. 2006. Experimental tests for an evolutionary trade-off between growth rate and yield in E. coli. American Naturalist 168: 242-251.

Pelosk, L., L. Kuhn, D. Guetta, J. Garin, J. Geiselmann, R. E. Lenski, and D. Schneider. 2006. Parallel changes in global protein profiles during long-term experimental evolution in Escherichia coli. Genetics 173: 1851-1869.

Lenski, R.E., J.E. Barrick, and C. Ofria. 2006. Balancing robustness and evolability (Essay). PLoS Biology 4: e428 [3 pp].

Sleight, S.C., N.S. Wigginton, and R. E. Lenski. 2006. Increased suceptibility to rerpeated freeze-thaw cycles in Escherichia coli following long-term evolution in a benign environment. BMC Evolutionary Biology 6: 104 [8pp].