Frances Arnold's game-changing technique of "directed evolution" creates enzymes with unusual capabilities. Her own evolution made it possible.

A nearly complete dinosaur skeleton discovered in Patagonia is helping scientists crack the mystery of alvarezsaurs, a bizarre group of bird-like dinosaurs. The fossil of Alnashetri cerropoliciensis ...

In Lake Malawi, hundreds of species of cichlid fish have evolved with astonishing speed, offering scientists a rare opportunity to study how biodiversity arises.

Evolution is perhaps the most extraordinary story ever told—a tale spanning billions of years that connects every living thing on Earth through an intricate ...

Most people know only two things about the appendix: You don’t need it – and if it bursts, you need surgery fast. That basic story traces back at least to Charles Darwin, the English naturalist who ...

Researchers have created a method called optovolution that uses light to guide the evolution of proteins with dynamic behaviors. By engineering yeast cells so their survival depended on proteins ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Directed evolution is a laboratory method that speeds up protein mutations to help create novel cancer and neurodegenerative disorder therapies. In a ...

Certain species of wasps and frogs share a pain and inflammation peptide similar to one found in vertebrates to help defend against predators—a discovery that contributes to a shifting view of how ...

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 ...

Evolution has been known as survival of the fittest, however the fittest may also have been simply the luckiest. Though genetics are a driving force of evolution, many evolutionary changes were a ...