2018 Nobel Prize honours for 3 chemists who harnessed 'power of evolution'

Scientists are now using evolution to create designer proteins for therapies and industrial processes

The three 2018 Nobel Prize winners for chemistry were recognized for inventing fast and reliable methods for “hacking” evolution – techniques that have transformed scientific research and have already led to better drug treatments, greener and more efficient chemical manufacturing processes, and more economical biofuels.

Thanks to these inventions, what nature takes millennia to do, can now be performed by chemists in weeks or less. What’s more, these prize-winning methods form what I regard as a final proof for the molecular basis for Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The Nobel Prize in chemistry was split between Frances H. Arnold and George P.