What do you get when you propose to someone at a cheesemaking facility? Hopefully a yes, if they’re not too put off by the smell – but as a new study has shown, you might also end up with the ability to witness evolution in real time. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

That’s what happened in 2016, when Tufts University associate professor of biology Benjamin Wolfe duped his former post-doc advisor, Rachel Dutton, into taking a trip to Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. He’d said it was to collect samples of Bayley Hazen Blue cheese, but it was really so that Dutton’s boyfriend, Charlie Kalish, could propose.

It wasn’t a complete ruse though. Wolfe still got his cheese samples from the facility’s caves, and popped them in his l

See Full Page