Scientists Fix Bugs In Our Understanding Of Evolution

ScienceDaily (June 24, 2008) — What makes a human different from a chimp? Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute [EMBL-EBI] have come one important step closer to answering such evolutionary questions correctly. In the current issue of Science they uncover systematic errors in existing methods that compare genetic sequences of different species to learn about their evolutionary relationships.

"Evolution is happening so slowly that we cannot study it by simply watching it. That's why we learn about the relationships between species and the course and mechanism of evolution by comparing genetic sequences," says Nick Goldman, group leader at EMBL-EBI.

The focus of molecular biology is shifting, however, and understanding functional changes in genomes requires specifically designed methods that consider sequences' histories. Such approaches will likely reveal further bugs in our understanding of evolution in future and might challenge the conventional picture of sequence evolution.