Dynamic diversity in drug discovery: Putting small-molecule evolution to work.

From oligonucleotides to orangutans, nature has found darwinian evolution to be the most efficient means of optimizing populations of organisms - or molecules. Recently, several research groups have begun adapting darwinian evolution to the identification of small molecules with specific properties. Although still at an early stage, this new field of 'dynamic diversity' shows promise as a method for the identification of high-affinity ligands for biomolecules.