ABSTRACT
We will discuss how, on a complex landscape of stress (which corresponds to a free energy landscape), the common bacterium E. coli can evolve very high resistance to an antibiotic in about 10 hours, which is remarkably only at most 20 generations. Furthermore, the resistance has a surprisingly parsimonious genetic prole: only four single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). How is this possible? How did a bacterium with the presumably low mutation rate μ of only 10-9 SNPs/basepair-replication so quickly nd the magic four
1.1 Introduction: Is Evolution Theory in Trouble? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
