Browse our latest Evolutionary Biology articles

The study of the interactions between 65,356 variants of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain and a panel of monoclonal antibodies shows that Omicron’s escape is driven by a small number of large effect mutations.

Expression patterns and biophysical properties of acid-sensing ion channels in numerous bilaterian animals offer insight into the deployment of ion channels by the evolving nervous system in complex animals.

The effect of balancing selection on the human genome is greater than previously appreciated, especially affecting large deletion variations.

Selective sweepstakes from pervasive positive selection, rather than demographic changes or random sweepstakes reproduction, is the primary determinant of reproductive skew and genetic diversity in the highly prolific Atlantic cod.

Loss-of-function mutations in human genes are an important class of disease causing variation, and estimates of their effects on evolutionary fitness can be used to evaluate their pathogenicity.

Mutations conferring resistance to Escherichia coli against the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine can have opposite effects on bacterial drug degradation and therefore can increase or decrease the chemotherapy load on neighboring cancer cells.

Genetic conflicts between sex chromosomes during spermatogenesis may drive the rapid evolution, function, and turnover of some sperm nuclear basic proteins in Drosophila species.

Key functional variants, discovered using Massively Parallel Reporter Assay (MPRA) and reporter assays in the context of SARS-CoV-2 infection, support the importance of two critical chemokine receptor genes CCR1 and CCR5 in severe Covid-19 illness.

The diversification of hand bones in mammals was much more dynamic than those of the proximal and intermediate forearm, involving higher morphological diversity, stronger integration, and greater evolutionary lability at distal structures.

Analysis of population diversity of SARS-CoV-2 revealed positive epistasis between sites carrying mutations characterizing rapidly expanding lineages.