Enzyme engineering with evolution
Ever since the very first living thing emerged on Earth, evolution has shaped the development and diversity of life. The drive to survive and thrive has resulted in a spectacular range of living things that seem like perfect fits for their particular environmental niches, as favourable genetic variants are passed down from one generation to another.
Humans have been tinkering with the tools of life for thousands of years, ever since we first started deliberately breeding plants or animals to bring out the traits we wanted—a tree with sweeter fruit, perhaps, or dogs that are loyal and easy to train.
We’ve also been able to harness the power of evolution to create biochemical tools that can build better medicines and cleaner fuels. It’s a feat that won chemical engineer Frances Arnold the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her work in directed evolution of enzymes (jointly shared with biochemists George Smith and Gregory Winter for a separate discovery).
