In the near future, the upcoming posts will center on Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) and how the function of this particular protein can explain rapid morphological evolution, or rapidly evolving phenotypic variation if you will. The topic and papers on it, are in my opinion hugely underrated. To me, until these papers came out, the extremely rapid (in a cosmic timescale) change in physical appearance that is seen in the evolution of species, was the major (only ?) valid argument contradicting Darwinian evolution through random mutations and genetic drift. This because genetic drift through random or even guided mutations, is just too slow to explain the evolution of such a vast spectrum of species as the one present on earth, in such a (relatively speaking) short time. The concept of masking mutations through the action of Hsp90 was an eye-opener and presented me with an extension to genetic evolution that explained rapid phenotypic change. Thank god(!) for this possible counter argument towards the missing link babble presented by creationists and their like. And it is surprising that these papers haven’t been used more in discussions concerning evolution. More details on Hsp90 to follow, but the fundamental paper is (not open access unfortunately): Hsp90 as a capacitor for morphological evolution Nature 396, 336 – 342 (26 Nov 1998).