The ability of scientists to rationally engineer organisms using synthetic biology, or “engineering biology” as I prefer to call it, has progressed greatly since high throughput molecular biology ...

Human newborns arrive remarkably underdeveloped. The reason lies in a deep evolutionary trade-off between big brains, bipedalism and the limits of motherhood.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created an RNA molecule that can not just replicate, but “evolve” into a diverse range of more complex molecules. This find could plug a major gap in the ...

A paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution, reports that Italian bears living in areas with many villages evolved and became smaller and less aggressive. Humans have long shaped the environments in ...

The DNA mutations that drive evolution are generally thought to be fairly random, but a new study suggests there’s some order to the chaos. Comparing the genomes of hundreds of plants grown in a lab, ...

Why does natural selection appear to happen slowly on long timescales and quickly on short ones? A multigenerational study of four lizard species addresses biology’s “paradox of stasis.” James Stroud ...

A new platform combines rational protein design with continuous evolution to discover functional molecules more efficiently. In medicine and biotechnology, the ability to evolve proteins with new or ...

Most bacteria replicate quickly. For example, Escherichia coli double their number in just 20 minutes. If the bacteria are infectious human pathogens, such rapid replication can be problematic. But ...

Facey, Douglas E., Bowen, Brian W., Collette, Bruce B., and Helfman, Gene S. 2023. The Diversity of Fishes: Biology, Evolution and Ecology. 3rd ed. Hoboken, New ...