Browse our latest Evolutionary Biology articles

Developmental regulatory mechanisms for peripheral nervous system formation appear to be conserved in ascidians despite extensive genomic divergence after 390 MY of separate evolution.

Cholestyramine, an FDA-approved bile acid sequestrant, can be repurposed to inactivate the antibiotic daptomycin in the gut, which prevents the emergence of transmissible antibiotic resistance in gastrointestinal Enterococcus faecium populations.

Sex differences in trait variability imply that both sexes should be included in biomedical trials, using sex-specific statistical power calculations.

The same host–virus interactions can evolve multiple times in nature, due to the high effective mutation rate of viruses, and provide interesting systems of study.

Development from dual-origin mesenchyme with common competence explains anatomical parallels and shared patterning of the jawed vertebrate gill arch and paired fin skeletons.

A disease-associated polymorphism in a related protein that regulates neurotransmitter release reveals that antiviral protein IFITM3 forms oligomers to rigidify membranes and inhibit virus fusion with cells.

A bacterial tRNA gene set rapidly evolves, compensating the loss of one tRNA type by large duplication events that increase the gene copy number of a second, different tRNA type.

A novel, overlapping, putatively functional gene in SARS-CoV-2, ORF3d, is absent from close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 and may have contributed to the biology, emergence, or spread of the virus.

Heterochromatic sequences evolve rapidly, as do ZAD-ZNF genes-encoding proteins involved in heterochromatin functions, explaining why evolutionarily dynamic ZAD-ZNF genes are more likely to be essential in Drosophila.

Selection for undifferentiated multicellularity emerges in an evolutionary cell-based model because a collective of cells performs chemotaxis better than single cells in a noisy environment.