EVOLUTION can occur in a way never previously shown. Geneticists have discovered that the strange proteins called prions can temporarily give yeast cells new powers which can then be quickly, and permanently, assimilated into their chromosomes.
“This provides a novel way for organisms to try out different traits, survive and adapt to fluctuating environments,” says Susan Lindquist who led the work at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The finding unexpectedly brings together the theories that Charles Darwin and his chief rival Jean-Baptiste Lamarck developed to explain evolution.
Translated into modern terms, Darwin’s theory of natural selection…
