Recent advances in the in vitro evolution of nucleic acids

Molecular evolution allows chemists and biologists to generate nucleic acids with tailor-made binding or catalytic activities. Recent examples of nucleic acid evolution in vitro provide insights into natural ribozyme evolution and also demonstrate potential applications of evolved DNA and RNA molecules. Efforts to expand the scope of nucleic acid evolution are also underway, including the development of novel methods for exploring nucleic acid sequence-space and the incorporation of non-natural chemical functionality into nucleic acid libraries.