The brilliant physicist Richard Feynman famously said that, in principle, biology can be explained by understanding the wiggling and jiggling of atoms. For the first time, new research from the University of Bristol, UK and the University of Waikoto, New Zealand explains how this ‘wiggling and jiggling’ of the atoms in enzymes – the proteins that make biological reactions happen – is ‘choreographed’ to make them work at a particular temperature. Enzyme catalysis is essential to life, and this research sheds light on how enzymes have evolved and adapted, enabling organisms to evolve to live at different temperatures.