New research into the cephalopod genome is undermining our assumptions about evolution, and the role that DNA mutations play in updating a species’ physiology.

Researchers from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and Tel Aviv University have been studying how cephalopods — squids, octopuses, cuttlefish and nautiluses — edit their genome, and found that instead of relying on DNA mutations to adapt, they have the ability to make changes to their RNA, the genetic “messengers” that