Scientists show how proteins beat the evolutionary stakes

Evolution is something of a gamble: in order to stay a step ahead of a shifting environment, organisms must change or risk extinction. Yet the instrument of this change, mutation, carries a serious threat: mutations are hundreds of times more likely to be harmful to the organism than advantageous. Now, in a paper published online Nov. 28 in Nature Genetics, a team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science has shown one way that evolving organisms may be hedging their bets.

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<p><a href="http://www.physorg.com/news2467.html">Scientists show how proteins beat the evolutionary stakes</a></p> <p>Evolution is something of a gamble: in order to stay a step ahead of a shifting environment, organisms must change or risk extinction. Yet the instrument of this change, mutation, carries a serious threat: mutations are hundreds of times more likely to be harmful to the organism than advantageous. Now, in a paper published online Nov. 28 in Nature Genetics, a team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science has shown one way that evolving organisms may be hedging their bets. </p>