There have been surprises. The dogma is evolution is unpredictable but on a small scale it is not always unpredictable. Microbes show a predictable pattern in developing resistance to drugs, for example, Wichman said. You can see the same changes occurring independently in different patients. We're trying to understand the rules that govern when evolution is predictable.
Viruses can also evolve quickly and switch hosts, a well-known worry in the medical world.
That's why HIV, hantavirus and flu viruses pose such a threat and a challenge for molecular biologists, she said. These viruses are evolving on a time scale we can observe and hopefully control. Foster said evolution is not the sole realm of biology. He's used evolutionary theory to design programs that can respond to changes and reprogram the hardware they're running on to adapt, much as living things can. There's another parallel between molecular biology and computer science, Foster said.