As a result, the evolutionary pressures that once favored the appendix have largely disappeared. Meanwhile, the medical risks of keeping the appendix – most notably appendicitis – remain. Modern ...

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 ...

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 ...

As early humans spread from lush African forests into grasslands, their need for ready sources of energy led them to develop a taste for grassy plants, especially grains and the starchy plant tissue ...

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 ...

One hundred years ago, the small town of Dayton, Tenn., became the unlikely stage for one of the most sensational trials in American history. A local substitute teacher, John Scopes, was charged with ...

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 ...

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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 ...