Positive Evolutionary Mutations Not Entirely Random

These beaks may not have evolved through random chance.

If anybody remembers their high school biology (and let's be honest, you probably don't, I barely do), you might remember learning about how evolution is random.  A species lives or dies on how lucky it gets.  If it gets a favorable mutation, it allows the species to survive and reproduce in changing conditions while other species, or even members of the same species, die off.  It's all about passing on random advantageous mutations to offspring.

A new study seems to disagree with that tried and true approach to evolution.  It found that most of the time, mutations occur not at random, but at so called "mutational hot spots".  These are places where DNA mis-pairing often occurs, but at crucial junctures within the sequence; so that during protein formation, instead of the mutation being repeated out, it remains in between sequences of normal DNA in order to preserve the function of the protein.  This combination of factors, DNA mis-pairing during replication and the need to preserve protein function, is probably what allows evolution to occur so rapidly during times of great upheaval in the environment, and more importantly, it just seems a bit more elegant.  Random chance happens, of course, but scientists aren't big fans of random, and the random nature of natural selection just didn't feel right.