BY swapping chunks of DNA on a yeast's genome, researchers have turned one species into another. Their genetic tinkering has not only answered a vexing question about how species form but has shown that it is possible to instantly undo, and thus illuminate, thousands of years of evolutionary change.
Speciation is an excruciatingly slow process - so slow in fact, that it has been impossible to directly test how it works. So researchers play detective by poring over fossil records and sifting through the genomes of organisms. "It's a retrospective and passive analysis," says Stephen Oliver of the University of Manchester.
Until now, that is. Oliver and his team have engineered the chromosomes of brewer's yeast
The hallmark of different species is their inability to ...
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