Greetings on this winter solstice, and welcome to this new LTEE website! The winter solstice marks a sort of new beginning, as the days become longer for the next half year, before then becoming shorter until the cycle is repeated.
Every day, the E. coli populations in the long-term evolution experiment experience a cycle of renewed resources and growth followed by depletion of their food and then waiting for the next transfer event.
On a much longer timescale, the LTEE also experiences cycles as it is passed from one scientific generation to the next. This website reflects the beginning of the second scientific generation of the LTEE, as the populations and responsibility for their sustenance will soon pass from my lab to that of the new director, Jeff Barrick.
On this website, you can get an introduction and quick overview of the LTEE including how it works, its goals, some of the key findings, and plans for its future. You can see a timeline of the experiment with some of the milestones and key events in its history. You can read, watch, and listen to a few of the news stories about the LTEE. You can find resources including protocols and links to important datasets. You can search and find links to the publications that report findings from the LTEE itself as well as descendant experiments that have used the LTEE lines. And last, but not least, you can see the talented people who’ve done and are doing the work behind the LTEE, including propagating the populations, performing analyses, analyzing data, and reporting the findings.
We’ve probably missed some papers, and we know that we’re still missing photos for some participants. We’ve also only scratched the surface of reporting past news. So please let us know if you find someone or something LTEE-related that you’d like to see included on this website. For now, enjoy the new beginnings as seasons and generations continue onward!