A new study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (MPI-EB) sheds fresh light on one of the most debated concepts in biology: evolvability. The work provides the first ...

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 ...

A fish thought to be evolution’s time capsule just surprised scientists. A detailed dissection of the coelacanth — a 400-million-year-old species often called a “living fossil” — revealed that key ...

Tiffany Taylor, professor of microbial ecology and evolution at the University of Bath in the U.K., recommends the books that shaped her career and her outlook on life. When you purchase through links ...

It's not what you do, it's how readily you do it. Rapid evolutionary change might have more to do with how easily a key innovation can be gained or lost rather than with the innovation itself, ...

Cooking food is one of the activities that makes humanity unique. It's not just about what tastes good: advances in cooking technology have been a constant part of our progress, from the ability to ...

In 1943, a physicist and a biologist published a paper that confirmed one of the central pillars of Darwin's theory of evolution. The paper, by Max Delbrück of Vanderbilt University and Salvador Luria ...

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 ...