Yet modern biology has revealed that cells are preternaturally sophisticated assemblages — literally automated, miniaturized factories. How could the evidence have been overwhelming but now orthodoxy ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A new study shows that evolution may look neutral only because shifting environments prevent helpful mutations from taking over.

One hundred years ago, a substitute teacher in Dayton, Tenn., was charged with the crime of teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. His name was John Scopes. At the time, ...

Abrupt shifts in the evolution of animals -- short periods of time when an organism rapidly changes size or form -- have long been a challenge for theorists including Darwin. Now a newly published ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Andréa Morris reports on emergent intelligence in diverse systems. “Where are all the genetic cures?” asks Denis Noble, a ...

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 ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Humanity’s understanding of life was forever altered when ...

Bill Bateman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

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, ...