ABSTRACT
Discoveries of the elaborate structure of genes raise evolutionary questions that lie outside the scope of traditional theory. Darwinism rationalises how structures evolve, but does not address the more significant issue of the rôles that specialised gene structures play in the process of evolution itself. I suggest that molecular genetics can be integrated into evolutionary theory only through the paradigm that underlies all biological explanation; the structure-function principle. Organisms carry out evolutionary processes as biological functions. To do so, species evolve special structures with evolutionary functions just as they evolve other phenotypic structures to carry out various adaptive functions. I shall discuss the evolutionary functions of a variety of structures, ways that these functional capacities evolve, and some implications of evolution being a process that organisms become specialised to carry out instead of just change imposed on the species from the external environment.
