The study of experimental evolution in Escherichia coli has provided unprecedented insights into the mechanisms of adaptive mutations, elucidating how populations diverge and optimise their fitness ...

Scientists from the United States have recently assessed the evolutionary success of mutations accumulated across severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) genome. They have ...

Scientists report adaptive divergence in cryptic color pattern is underlain by two distinct, complex chromosomal rearrangements, where millions of bases of DNA were flipped backwards and moved from ...

For a long time, evolutionary biologists have thought that the genetic mutations that drive the evolution of genes and proteins are largely neutral: they're neither good nor bad, but just ordinary ...

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED That concept was so powerful that we ...

For more than half a century, many biologists have leaned on the neutral theory of molecular evolution to explain how DNA and proteins change over time. The idea grew from early work in the 1960s, ...

A peculiar study into malaria resistance in humans, and where and how it occurs in the population, has unexpectedly spurred a re-evaluation of the neo-Darwinist understanding of evolution.

Understanding the material basis of adaptive evolution has been a central goal in biology dating back to at least the time of Darwin. One focus of current debates is whether adaptive evolution relies ...

New imaging reveals a built-in safeguard that allows B cell populations to rapidly expand in germinal centers without introducing deleterious mutations. Germinal centers are high-speed evolution ...