Combined antigenic and genetic analysis shows that different strains of the human influenza virus display dramatically different rates of antigenic drift, and that these differences have a significant impact on the number of new infections in each flu season.
Roberto A Keller, Christian Peeters, Patrícia Beldade
Body shape and behavioural specializations found across the castes of ant species evolved together and reflect different abilities for ground behaviors.
Arnau Sebé-Pedrós, Manuel Irimia ... Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo
The transition to the aggregative stage of Capsaspora owczarzaki, a close unicellular relative to Metazoa, is associated with significant upregulation of orthologs of genes that are important for multicellularity in metazoans.
Avihu H Yona, Zohar Bloom-Ackermann ... Yitzhak Pilpel
Experimental evolution and systematic sequence analysis of transfer RNA genes reveal that anticodon mutations provide adaptive plasticity to the translation machinery.
A study that models the evolution of drug resistance in tumors reveals that drugs are more effective when given in combination than sequentially, and that cure is much more likely when the drugs target different pathways.
The divergence of gene regulation during evolution in yeast traces phylogenetic distance with prominent changes being associated with changes in lifestyle and a whole genome duplication event.