[Perspective] Toward a prospective molecular evolution

The field of molecular evolution is concerned with evolutionary changes in genes and genomes and the underlying driving forces behind those changes. Current studies in molecular evolution are almost entirely retrospective, with a focus on the mutations that were fixed during evolution, and the conclusions are often explanatory, offering no predictive insights. Because only a tiny fraction of all mutations that have ever occurred during evolution have been fixed, the “successes” that we see t