University of Auckland evolution study hailed as breakthrough

28 April 2026

Science and technology, Faculty of Science

University of Auckland scientists made one of the big breakthroughs in biology of 2025, according to Quanta Magazine, an influential US publication on maths and science.

Computational biologist Dr Jordan Douglas and theoretical biologist Dr Peter Wills analysed evolutionary changes across three vastly different groups - cephalopods such as octopuses and squids, the Indo-European family of languages, and ancient enzymes.

Change came mostly in short, intense bursts, not as a slow and continuous process, their research showed.

That supported the `punctuated equilibrium' theory proposed in the 1970s by US paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould as an alternative to Charles Darwin's notion of gradual evolution.

Eldredge, aged in his 80s and living in New York, hopes the Auckland research will be a tipping point for acceptance of the theory.

"I've been fighting for this stuff for 50 years," he told Quanta.

The project spun off Wills's research into the origins of genetic code with collaborator Professor Charlie Carter from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

"We're focused on how genetic coding first emerged around 4 billion years ago," says Wills, an honorary academic in the Department of Physics. "For the first time, nucleic acid sequences - probably RNA rather than DNA - were used to encode the catalytic control of chemical processes that now take place in all living cells."

Back in 1871, Darwin imagined life starting in a "warm little pond" of chemicals, what became known as a "primordial soup".

The most widely accepted theory says RNA self-replicated in the soup and other building blocks of life, such as proteins and DNA, came later.

Wills and Carter disagree, arguing that RNA and peptides - chains of amino acids that are essentially smaller and simpler versions of proteins - likely evolved together to create the first genetic code.

Wills is encouraged that a US not-for-profit, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, has just extended its funding for this work.

Co-authors of the paper highlighted by Quanta are Carter and University of Auckland scientists Dr Remco Bouckaert (Computer Science) and Associate Professor Simon Harris (Statistics).

Key to the research was Douglas extending the popular BEAST 2 software, developed in Auckland, for reconstructing family trees from genetic data to accurately account for sudden spikes in rates of mutation. The scientist is now working at Australian National University.

Quanta's video features the research 10 minutes 30 seconds in.

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