Independent groups of viruses evolved identical full length genomes in a lab which proves that evolution is a predictable blueprint.

Genetic evolution is typically viewed as a branching tree where random mutations lead to diverse and unpredictable outcomes. This long-term experiment with bacteriophages shows that separate populations arrive at the exact same genetic code when faced with the same environment. The level of parallelism observed is statistically impossible to explain by chance alone. This suggests that for many organisms, there is a singular, optimal genetic destination that the forces of nature will always find. Knowing that evolution can be deterministic could allow us to predict how pathogens will mutate before a new variant ever emerges.