High Performance Computing Revolutionizes Evolutionary Biology

I was an evolutionary skeptic for many years. While I enthusiastically embraced natural selection I stumbled over the role mutations played in the evolutionary process. The reason was purely mathematical; I believed that there simply wasn’t enough time since the earliest microbes appeared on earth for life to undergo enough favorable mutations to evolve into homo sapiens. Typically, genetic mutations don’t yield favorable results at least where evolution is concerned. Both mathematicians and many biologists calculate that less than one mutation in 10,000 results in favorable or positive results.

During the 1980’s genetic research into DNA began to revolutionize biology. In this century another significant technological event occurred with the availability of inexpensive high-performance computers. It was now possible to map DNA in hours instead of years. Genetic researchers took advantage of this new technology to map the genome of the fruit fly, drosophila.

It was only a matter of time before geneticists mapped the human genome. This unlocked the baseline of human existence. Everything that is human is encoded into our DNA. Every day more and more is learned about how we became human. This revelation is based on a complex code, which is made up of 4 simple ingredients, uniquely arranged in a double helix.

Closely examining DNA allows biologists to discern what is different about humans and other species. What is remarkable is that we share most of our DNA code with all the other species alive now and were alive in times past.

Then something amazing happened. By tracking the male Y chromosome, Geneticists were able to trace the Y chromosome, which is part of our human DNA code - backwards in time. Fathers pass that Y chromosome to their male offspring.

Sometimes the Y chromosome undergoes a harmless mutation that distinctively marks the chromosome. Every male offspring inherits that unique chromosome from their father, and his father, and his father, and so on. When scientists took DNA samples from populations all over the world they were able to trace those DNA markers to a tribe of humans in Southern Africa. That genetic identifier in now being used to traced further back in time when homo sapiens began their initial migration out of sub-Saharan Africa.

This migration took place in at least two phases beginning somewhere between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. We can trace with great precision every group of humans to nearly every geographical location on Earth. Homo sapiens migrated across North Africa, Mesopotamia, Europe, the Middle-East, into South Asia, up through Siberia, across the Bering Strait, and into North and South America. During the great ice age another earlier migration brought homo sapiens to Australia.

This made it clear to me that, in spite of the mullion of mutations that have taken place, over hundreds of thousands of years, homo sapiens thrived and adapted to every geographical, geological, climactic, and predatory challenge. As it turns out many of the mutations that we once thought were deleterious to our development benefited the evolutionary progress. While some mutations did cause diseases and malformations, most encouraged humans to select and adapt to our surroundings.

The new science of Developmental Evolutionary Biology, (abbreviated, Evo-Devo) has helped us understand that the laws of physics influence the evolutionary process. Scientists once thought chance occurrences or accidents dominated the evolutionary process. However, new research suggests that all evolution is the result of physics and mathematical formula; The same physical laws that govern everything in the Universe also govern the evolutionary developmental processes.

This was a pivotal moment for me. Physics, the most fundamental science enables scientists to write mathematical formula that correspond to nearly every biological process. Physics, mathematics, chemistry, electricity, quantum mechanics, and even gravity all cooperate to define the evolution of every species. If life exists on other planets in our Universe than those same laws would govern evolution there since our Universe inherited the same physical laws moments after the Big Bang.

The development of all species on earth, both in the past and in the present can be described according to mathematics, supported by biological research, and the science of genetics. While some processes in our evolutionary progress are random most are not. Evolutionary biology is simply another branch of physics and mathematical law. There is no such thing as the theory of evolution, instead there is a branch of a fundamental science – Developmental Evolutionary Biology, which is underpinned by the laws of physics and the rules of mathematics. The genetic development of all species including homo sapiens - is a Law. These laws have been verified through repeatable experimentation thousands, perhaps millions of times over many years.