Phys.org June 8, 2021
Researchers in the UK have developed the concept of the evotype to help biological engineers both harness, design, and capture the evolutionary potential of a biosystem. The evotype can be broken into three key parts: Variation, Function, and Selection, with each of these offering a tuning knob for bioengineers to control the possible paths available to evolution. Many of the tools already available to bioengineers fitted nicely into their framework when considered from an evolutionary perspective. Their concept of the evotype not only provides a means for developing biotechnologies that can harness evolution in new ways, but also opens exciting new avenues to think about and implement evolution in completely new contexts. Potentially, this could even lead to us designing new, self-adaptive technologies that evolve from scratch, rather than tinkering with biological ones that already do…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
The evotype and its key properties. Credit: Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 3326 (2021)Â