Something similar to this is done with bacteria and other life forms for all kinds of reasons. It's called directed evolution, where you take a strain of bacteria with a certain property (say aerobic nitrogen fixation at 65 Centigrade) and try to force that property to evolve (say force the aforementioned aerobic fixation to work at STP).
It's a very understood method but it's really difficult to develop proper methodology since almost every experiment will be different. The success percentage is also relatively low and is like playing the lottery (literally, you never know if the evolution is even physically possible or it might be so statistically rare that you'd need millions of parallel cultures).
It's a very understood method but it's really difficult to develop proper methodology since almost every experiment will be different. The success percentage is also relatively low and is like playing the lottery (literally, you never know if the evolution is even physically possible or it might be so statistically rare that you'd need millions of parallel cultures).