Selection in Assembly Space. (A) Pictorial representation of the assembly space represents the formation of combinatorial object space from building blocks and physical constraints. (B) Observed copy ...

Human evolution is often told as a tidy story of adaptation, yet some of our most familiar body parts still defy straightforward explanation. From the jut of the human chin to the curve of the outer ...

The emergence of metazoan multicellularity has captivated evolutionary cell and developmental biologists for decades. Recent advances in genome sequencing, phylogenetic comparisons, the successful ...

Ever since scientists first read the complete genetic codes of creatures like fruit flies and humans more than two decades ago, the field of genomics has promised major leaps forward in understanding ...

Amphioxus, as a basal chordate, offers an insightful window into the evolutionary origins of vertebrate development. Its embryogenesis, characterised by the formation of a notochord, neural tube and ...

The human body is a machine whose many parts—from the microscopic details of our cells to our limbs, eyes, liver and brain—have been assembled in fits and starts over the 4 billion years of our ...

Researchers have studied gene expression dynamics during metamorphosis in two species of flies. Published in the Genome Biology and Evolution, the study aims to identify patterns of changes in gene ...

An international team of researchers has developed a new theoretical framework that bridges physics and biology to provide a unified approach for understanding how complexity and evolution emerge in ...

Assembly theory bridges the gap between physics and biology in explaining how complex objects are identifiable as products of evolution and how reusability of parts allows novelty and identical ...