Pathogens, particularly viruses, target the same genes over deep evolutionary time, resulting in shared signatures of positive selection and transcriptional responses at the same genes.
Complete mapping of human-adaptive mutations to the avian influenza PB2 protein shows how selection at key molecular interfaces combines with evolutionary accessibility to shape viral host adaptation.
Environmental heterogeneity can dramatically reduce the efficacy of selection and alter the neutral evolutionary dynamics in microbial range expansions.
MalariaGEN Plasmodium falciparum Community Project
Plasmodium falciparum kelch13 mutations that cause artemisinin resistant malaria in Southeast Asia show markedly different patterns of evolutionary selection in Africa.
An integrated biochemical and evolutionary analysis shows how enzyme specificity evolves after gene loss during genome decay, implicating relaxation of purifying selection as a driving force for functional divergence.
The way that bacteria grow—either floating in liquid or attached to a surface—affects their ability to evolve antimicrobial resistance and our ability to treat infections.
Elephants and fruit bats have evolved large brains even though they have lost a gene that is fundamental to the supply of energy to the brain when glucose is not available.
