Browse our latest Evolutionary Biology articles

The evolution of the light-sensitive visual pigment rhodopsin involved functional tradeoffs that may have sacrificed rod photosensitivity for active-state protein stability to mitigate phototoxicity in tetrapods, but not in fishes.

The discovery of a biological switching valve provides an example of a mechanism that evolved in nature long before its invention by man and could inspire alternative valve technologies.

Elephants and fruit bats have evolved large brains even though they have lost a gene that is fundamental to the supply of energy to the brain when glucose is not available.

The evolutionary loss of the main enzyme required for ketone body biosynthesis suggests that alternative strategies to provide energy for large brains during fasting evolved repeatedly in mammals.

Flying squirrels may have originated earlier than previously thought and remained unchanged for almost 12 million years.

Cooperativity between two transcription regulators occurs through protein-protein interactions with a general transcription factor complex and potentiates the parallel evolution of their DNA binding sites.

Endoplasmic reticulum proteostasis factors enhance the mutational tolerance of influenza hemagglutinin, a model secretory pathway protein and therapeutic target, particularly improving the fitness of temperature-sensitive variants.

Early development involves both maternal and zygotic genetic effects. This dual genetic basis shapes the evolution of developmental mode in a marine annelid.

Sox21b-1 regulates simultaneous formation of anterior segments and addition of posterior segments in a spider, which resembles segmentation in long- and short-germ insects, and suggests SoxB regulation of segmentation is an ancestral feature of arthropods.

The discovery of a gene that regulates two segmentation mechanisms in spider embryos is fueling the ongoing debate about the evolution of this crucial developmental process.