All complex biological systems—like the DNA, RNA and proteins constantly being copied and built within our cells—are prone to errors. That means as life evolved to be more elaborate, it also had to ...

Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the evolution of the vertebrate eye. New research suggests that it traces back to a ...

Unfortunately, this book can't be printed from the OpenBook. If you need to print pages from this book, we recommend downloading it as a PDF. Visit NAP.edu/10766 to get more information about this ...

Imagine a photograph of your great-grandparents, grandparents and parents side by side. You’d see a resemblance, but each generation would look distinct from its predecessors. This is the process of ...

Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis occurred, where life emerged from non-life. Imagine a hot, watery mix of ...

The search space for protein engineering grows exponentially with complexity. A protein of just 100 amino acids has 20100 possible variants—more combinations than atoms in the observable universe.

Researchers at Scripps have created T7-ORACLE, a powerful new tool that speeds up evolution, allowing scientists to design and improve proteins thousands of times faster than nature. Using engineered ...

One hundred years ago a young teacher, John T. Scopes, went on trial in Dayton, Tenn., for violating a recently enacted state law that forbade the state’s educators “to teach any theory that denies ...