The exceptionally large size of the human brain is the result of accelerating evolution towards larger brains in hominins, but is not the product of neocortical expansion.
The animal phylogeny of glutamate receptors indicates that vertebrate types do not account for all receptor classes originated during evolution, neither are they the pinnacle of a linear evolutive process.
A method to assess the risk of self-sustained HIV transmission in heterosexuals from phylogenetic and epidemiological data is developed and, when applied to the Swiss HIV epidemic, shows that this risk is negligibly small for Switzerland.
A new model describes how adaptive molecular evolution shapes phylogenetic trees and can be used to estimate the fitness effects of mutations from phylogenies.
Comparative phylogenomic analyses based on a new reference-quality human Ascaris genome assembly reveals a pig/human interbred species complex with implications for Ascaris control worldwide.
The higher amount of cortical immature neurons in brains with expanded neocortices may represent a reservoir of young cells for mammals with reduced neurogenesis.
Considerable differences are observed in the global dissemination patterns of HBV-D and HBV-A, the genotypes of which have putative origins in North Africa/Middle East (HBV-D) and the Middle East/Central Asia (HBV-A).
Phylogenomics provides support for the Gram-positive type of bacterial cell envelope being a derived character that arose independently multiple times through loss of an ancestral outer membrane.
