Photo: Chinese Han characters, by Michael Coghlan, via Flickr (cropped).On a classic episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid talks with Dr. Ann Gauger, a senior research scientist at Biologic Institute and co-author with Dr. Douglas Axe of a paper published in the journal BIO-Complexity that probes the limits of evolutionary optimization.
Download the podcast or listen to it here.
Gauger explains how she and Axe tested popular hypotheses for protein origins and discovered that while mutation and selection can improve the proficiency of good designs through small adjustments, they seem unable to convert fortuitous selectable activities into good designs. Enjoy the interview, then read the full paper here!
Photo: Chinese Han characters, by Michael Coghlan, via Flickr (cropped).