A TINY genetic change can transform the function of an enzyme, scientists who captured the forces of natural selection in a Petri dish have shown. Their experiment is the first demonstration of how families of genes can evolve within living organisms.
Inside every cell is a complicated metabolic factory where specific proteins act as enzymes, converting available molecules into compounds vital for the life of the cell. A key question for evolutionary biologists is how this complicated machinery arose.
One theory is that genes in the simple genomes of early life forms duplicated, leaving the second copy of the gene…
