• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Friday, October 3, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News

Scientists develop the ‘evotype’ to unlock power of evolution for better engineering biology

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
September 6, 2025
in Science News
Reading Time: 2 mins read
0
IMAGE
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

A defining characteristic of all life is its ability to evolve. However, the fact that biologically engineered systems will evolve when used has, to date, mostly been ignored. This has resulted in biotechnologies with a limited functional shelf-life that fail to make use of the powerful evolutionary capabilities inherent to all biology.

Sim Castle, first author of the research, published in Nature Communications, and a PhD student in the School of Biological Sciences at Bristol, explained the motivation for the work: “The thing that has always fascinated me about biology is that it changes, it is chaotic, it adapts, it evolves. Bioengineers therefore do not just design static artefacts – they design living populations that continue to mutate, grow and undergo natural selection.”

Realising that describing this change was key to harnessing evolution, the team developed the concept of the evotype to capture the evolutionary potential of a biosystem. Crucially, the evotype can be broken into three key parts: variation, function, and selection, with each of these offering a tuning knob for bioengineers to control the possible paths available to evolution.

Prof Claire Grierson, co-author and Head of the School of Biological Sciences at Bristol, added: “Learning how to effectively engineer with evolution is one of, if not the biggest, challenges facing bioengineers today. Our work provides a desperately needed framework to help describe the evolutionary potential of a biosystem and re-imagine biological engineering so that it works in harmony with life’s ability to evolve.”

Sim Castle further stated: “What was surprising was that many of the tools already available to bioengineers fitted nicely into our framework when considered from an evolutionary perspective. We therefore might not be too far from making evolution a core feature of future engineered biological systems.”

Dr Thomas Gorochowski, senior author and a Royal Society University Research Fellow at Bristol, ended by saying: “Our concept of the evotype not only provides a means for developing biotechnologies that can harness evolution in new ways, but also opens exciting new avenues to think about and implement evolution in completely new contexts. Potentially, this could even lead to us designing new, self-adaptive technologies that evolve from scratch, rather than tinkering with biological ones that already do.”

###

This work was funded by the Royal Society, BBSRC/EPSRC Bristol Centre for Synthetic Biology (BrisSynBio) and EPSRC/BBSRC Synthetic Biology Centre for Doctoral Training (SynBioCDT) with support from the Bristol BioDesign Institute (BBI).

Paper

Simeon D. Castle, Claire S. Grierson, Thomas E. Gorochowski. Towards an engineering theory of evolution. Nature Communications, 2021; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23573-3

Media Contact
Shona East
[email protected]

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23573-3

Tags: adaptive biotechnologyBiologyBiomechanics/BiophysicsBiomedical/Environmental/Chemical EngineeringBiotechnologyevolutionary engineeringevotypenatural selectionsynthetic biology
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Encapsulated Pseudomonas Controls Pistachio Gummosis Effectively

Encapsulated Pseudomonas Controls Pistachio Gummosis Effectively

October 3, 2025
blank

Illuminating the Future: Transforming Streetlamps into Electric Vehicle Chargers

October 3, 2025

Transforming Palm Waste into High-Performance CO₂ Absorbers: Malaysian Scientists Innovate with Agricultural Byproducts

October 3, 2025

AI Advances Enhance Sustainable Recycling of Livestock Waste

October 3, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    93 shares
    Share 37 Tweet 23
  • New Study Indicates Children’s Risk of Long COVID Could Double Following a Second Infection – The Lancet Infectious Diseases

    88 shares
    Share 35 Tweet 22
  • Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

    75 shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19
  • New Insights Suggest ALS May Be an Autoimmune Disease

    67 shares
    Share 27 Tweet 17

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Encapsulated Pseudomonas Controls Pistachio Gummosis Effectively

Illuminating the Future: Transforming Streetlamps into Electric Vehicle Chargers

Transforming Palm Waste into High-Performance CO₂ Absorbers: Malaysian Scientists Innovate with Agricultural Byproducts

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 62 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.