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Recipes for Life: How Genes Evolve

from New Scientist

Once, we could only marvel at the wonder of life. Like movie audiences not so long ago, we had little idea of what went on behind the scenes.

How times have changed. As the genomes of more and more species are sequenced, geneticists are piecing together an extraordinarily detailed "Making of..." documentary. Nowadays, we can not only trace how the bodies of animals have evolved, we can even identify the genetic mutations behind these changes.

Most intriguing of all, we can now see how genes—which are the recipes for making proteins, the building blocks of life—arise in the first place. And the story is not unfolding quite as expected.