Natural selection is an evolutionary process in which individuals with survival-promoting traits reproduce at higher rates. These favorable traits…

Natural selection influences the frequencies of particular alleles and phenotypes within populations in several different ways. Primarily, natural…

When the fitness of a trait is influenced by how common it is (i.e., its frequency) relative to different traits within a population, this is…

Organisms that are well-adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. However, natural selection does not lead to perfectly…

Multicopy plasmids are extremely abundant in prokaryotes but their role in bacterial evolution remains poorly understood. We recently showed that the…

Directed evolution is defined as a method to harness natural selection in order to engineer proteins to acquire particular properties that are not…

Lignocellulosic biomass is an abundant, renewable feedstock useful for production of fuel-grade ethanol and other bio-products. Pretreatment and…