Evolution allows a population to adapt, learn, unlearn and relearn. And what is better than
microorganisms to study evolution. With properties like shorter half-lives, easy to grow
conditions and availability of tools and techniques like molecular biology, genome sequencing
etc., microorganisms like bacteria, yeast and cyanobacteria can help in studying Adaptive
Laboratory Evolution (ALE). ALE can help in increasing the tolerance of a microbe towards a
particular stress of interest. For example, a wild type strain of a microbe can be evolved for
increasing solvent concentrations, so as to get increased titers of the same solvent when the
adapted strain is genetically engineered for its production. Not much studies concerning ALE
and cyanobacteria is reported. In our lab, we are developing and integrating ALE and metabolic
engineering approaches in local isolates of cyanobacteria to get enhanced production of high
value chemicals.