From snowflakes to sunflowers, starfish to sharks, symmetry is everywhere in nature. But what if the first "arrival of variation" step is highly biased towards phenotypes high in symmetry or modularity. A protein cluster simulation with 13,079,255 different possible structure shapes had only five shapes with the symmetry of a square. Those simple symmetrical structures keep on getting thrown up,’ said co-author Dr Chico Camargo, University of Exeter. The full paper, 'Symmetry and simplicity spontaneously emerge from the algorithmic nature of evolution' is available to read on Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
