The evolution of a single organism can take thousands of years, but two MSU professors, along with some scientists from California, have used a computer simulation to watch the process in seconds.

Their findings - that the right environment can create a diverse group of organisms - were published in the July 2 edition of Science, a trade magazine.

The computer program, Avida, is a form of artificial life in which digital organisms can reproduce, mutate and compete. The scientists can evaluate produced data to see the changes in the organisms.

"We're trying to tackle questions that have been of long interest to biologists using a nontraditional system of evolving computer programs," said Richard Lenski, co-author and an MSU microbial ecology professor. "We showed that under the right circumstances, you could get more diversity of organisms.

"The environment affects how the organisms evolve. We see both in terms of changes in the genetic program itself and we also see it terms of the functions they can perform."

Lenski said he was pleased with the results of the experiment and the published article.

"I've always been interested in evolution," Lenski said. "It's really sort of the heart of biological sciences."

Charles Ofria, the other MSU co-author and an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, could not be reached for comment.

Also working on the project were a scientist from the California Institute of Technology and two from the Keck Graduate Institute.

Getting an article into Science isn't easy, said Monica Amarelo, a spokeswoman for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that publishes it.

"Out of 10,000 (submissions) a year, only 800 are selected," she said. "The competition is fierce."

Articles go through a peer-review process to be selected, she said.

"They're looking at research that'll have the greatest impact," Amarelo said.

Evolutionary biology research does have an impact, said Sam Scheiner, program director at the National Science Foundation, that helped fund the article research.

"What they're doing is looking at the fundamental process of evolution. There are large kinds of implications," he said, pointing to diseases that have evolved to be resistant to antibiotics and insects that have changed to survive pesticides.

This research helps scientists understand how the mutations enter the system and evolve, Scheiner said.

"You can understand exactly what is going on," he said. "You can let things evolve much, much longer - millions of generations in a day."