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 PhILR transform uses an evolutionary model to overcome statistical challenges associated with microbiota surveys.

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.

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.

Cell biological features are subject to stochastic forces of mutation and random genetic drift, which together cause lineages exposed to identical selection pressures to diverge, and mean phenotypes to deviate from expectations under optimizing selection.

MERS-CoV infections in the Arabian Peninsula are the result of several hundred spillover events from viruses circulating in camels into the human population.