Scripps Research Institute researchers have created an automated device that evolves a biological molecule on a chip filled with hundreds of miniature chambers.

The molecule, a ligase that stitches together strands of RNA, became 90 times more efficient after just 70 hours of evolution.

All the reactions occurred in a miniature chamber on the “evolution chip.” It mixed an inefficient ligase in with RNA, let it duplicate (two proteins do the duplication), and then reduced the concentration of RNA so that only more efficient forms of the ligase would survive. After reaching a specified level of efficiency, a miniature pump automatically sucked up a small amount of the contents and plopped it into a new chamber. This started another round of selection.

The researchers say the chip could be used for education–showing evolution in real-time–and to evolve better environmental sensors or evolve molecules with new chemical properties.