Genetic predictability steadily erodes during evolution, new study shows

A critical goal in genetics and evolution is predicting the effects of mutations that may happen in the future and inferring the effects of those that happened in the past. To make these predictions, scientists generally assume that a mutation’s effects tested in the present apply to past and future versions of the same gene. Rendering of the X-ray crystal structure of the 700-million-year-old ancestral steroid receptor (blue),  bound to DNA, gray. Starting from this protein (and...