Experimental evolution of phosphotriestrase to switch the catalytic activities

进化论为我们理解生物学提供了理论框架。了解进化动力学对于开发技术和方法在实验室中设计和设计新的酶也至关重要。从现有序列中获得的洞见极大地发展了我们对分子进化的认识。然而，这种传统的分析并没有研究进化的中间产物。因此，它限制了我们详细研究进化机制的能力。实验进化使我们能够在受控的实验室环境中重建进化过程。实验中获得的进化中间体代表了分子的“化石记录”，使我们能够探索分子功能的逐步进化，并阐明蛋白质如何获得不同的功能和结构。

Evolution provides the theoretical framework by which we can understand biology. Understanding evolutionary dynamics is also crucial to develop technologies and methodologies to engineer and design new enzymes in the laboratory. Insights that have come from existing sequences have substantially developed our knowledge of molecular evolution. However, this traditional analysis does not examine evolutionary intermediates. It therefore limits our ability to investigate evolutionary mechanisms in detail. Experimental evolution enables us to reconstruct evolutionary processes in a controlled laboratory setting. The evolutionary intermediates obtained in the experiments represent a molecular "fossil record", and allow us to explore the step-by-step evolution of molecular function, and to elucidate how proteins have acquired diverse functions and structures.