More in the 'personally influential' than the 'essential for an informed person':

The Long Term Evolution Experiment is one of my very favorite in the biological and physical sciences. It's decades old by now, and using that time to actually test the behavior of bacteria on true evolutionary timescales. They have seen multi-part ecosystems evolve from monocultures, and used the lab environment to 'roll back the tape' and see if evolutionary patterns can be made to jump through the same hoop twice.