Mutation-accumulation Experiment (IMAGE)

Washington University in St. Louis

Mutation-accumulation Experiment

Caption

In the mutation accumulation experiment, amoebae were allowed to reproduce until they formed a visible plaque, and then one was picked at random and carried to a new plate where it was allowed to reproduce and so on. Because the amoebae were picked at random and never allowed to form fruiting bodies, natural selection wasn’t removing harmful mutations; instead they were "fixed," or became a permanent part of a line's genome. The experiment showed that mutations that create cheaters don't happen all that often.

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Strassmann/Queller

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