Intel Inside

Aristotle, the father of biology, believed purpose distinguished living things from lifeless matter and that purpose drove the evolution of species.

Rather oddly, he also believed that purpose came from "inside" every creature—that purpose was in fact the cause of the creature.

Aristotle's theory pretty much ruled Westerners' ideas about evolution for 2,400 years, when suddenly Darwin exploded onto the scene in 1859, claiming evolution was random and purposeless.

Now, 163 years after the publication of Darwin's On the Origins of the Species, a new study reveals Aristotle was right all along: there is purpose behind mutations, but it comes both from "inside" and "outside" the creature.

The study shows human genes mutate not randomly, but in response to outside pressures.

The University of Haifa researchers responsible for the study have produced evidence showing that the rate of mutation of the genes that protect us against malaria is faster among Africans than among Europeans.

Because malaria grips Africa more so than Europe, the researchers concluded the genes mutated not by accident, but to help Africans survive the disease.

Darwin's insistence that mutations were random looks wrong.

"The results show the mutation is not generated at random, but instead originates preferentially in the gene and in the population where it is of adaptive significance," one researcher told Science X.

"We hypothesize that evolution is influenced by two sources of information: external information that is natural selection, and internal information that is accumulated in the genome through the generations and impacts the origination of mutations."

Since Darwin's book, scientists have assumed that mutations occur by accident and that natural selection—survival of the fittest—favors beneficial accidents, leading to evolutionary adaptations.

But the new findings suggest otherwise.

"The results suggest that complex information accumulated in the genome through the generations impacts mutation, and therefore mutation-specific origination rates can respond in the long-term to specific environmental pressures," the researcher said. 

"Mutations may be generated nonrandomly in evolution after all."

The study opens doors to reimagining evolution and to curing diseases caused by mutations such as cancer. While lending no credence to creationism, it also makes old Aristotle look pretty smart.

The study appears in Genome Research.