Adedeji M Aderounmu, P Joseph Aruscavage ... Brenda L Bass
Ancient animal Dicer used its helicase domain to couple the detection of foreign double-stranded RNA to efficient ATP hydrolysis and antiviral defense, but this function declined before the advent of deuterostomes and vertebrates.
Pramod K Jangir, Lois Ogunlana ... Craig R MacLean
Resistance genes that spread as a result of the use of an antimicrobial peptide (colistin) in agriculture (MCR) protect bacteria against key components of human and animal immune systems.
Samantha DM Arras, Nellie Sibaeva ... Anthony M Poole
An Escherichia coli line lacking deoxyribonucleotide synthesis has been created and subjected to experimental evolution, revealing that endosymbionts and pathogens that lack ribonucleotide reduction avoid loss of deoxyribonucleotides to central metabolism by disruption of the salvage pathway.
Snake venom phosphodiesterase (svPDE), one of the critical venom components, is co-opted from the ancestral ENPP3 gene that makes membrane-anchored ENPP3 into secretory svPDE by using an alternative 5' exon.
Chad M Eliason, Jenna M McCullough ... Michael J Andersen
Treating color patterns in a geometric morphometrics framework reveals rapid rates of color evolution that are explained by a combination of intrinsic organismal features (color variation among patches) and geography within a cosmopolitan radiation of birds.
Olaya Rendueles, Jorge AM de Sousa, Eduardo PC Rocha
The emergence and evolution of different phage-resistance strategies during coevolution between a phage-sensitive strain and a polylysogenic competitor depend on the amount of phage pressure, the fitness costs of resistance, and how these may change at different time scales.