Kagan, Ferenc Hejnol, Andreas
Published in
Molecular Biology and Evolution
Maternal genes have a pivotal role in regulating metazoan early development. As such their functions have been extensively studied since the dawn of developmental biology. The temporal and spatial dynamics of their transcripts have been thoroughly described in model organisms and their functions have been undergoing heavy investigations. Yet, less ...
Surm, Joachim M Landau, Morani Columbus-Shenkar, Yaara Y Moran, Yehu
Published in
Molecular Biology and Evolution
Gene duplication is a major force driving evolutionary innovation. A classic example is generating new animal toxins via duplication of physiological protein-encoding genes and recruitment into venom. While this process drives the innovation of many animal venoms, reverse recruitment of toxins into nonvenomous cells remains unresolved. Using compar...
McGrath, Casey
Published in
Molecular Biology and Evolution
McGrath, Casey
Published in
Molecular Biology and Evolution
Erven, Jolijn A M Scheu, Amelie Verdugo, Marta Pereira Cassidy, Lara Chen, Ningbo Gehlen, Birgit Street, Martin Madsen, Ole Mullin, Victoria E
Published in
Molecular Biology and Evolution
Ancient genomic analyses are often restricted to utilizing pseudohaploid data due to low genome coverage. Leveraging low-coverage data by imputation to calculate phased diploid genotypes that enables haplotype-based interrogation and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) calling at unsequenced positions is highly desirable. This has not been investi...
Niimura, Yoshihito Biswa, Bhim B Kishida, Takushi Toyoda, Atsushi Fujiwara, Kazumichi Ito, Masato Touhara, Kazushige Inoue-Murayama, Miho Jenkins, Scott H Adenyo, Christopher
...
Published in
Molecular biology and evolution
Chemical senses, including olfaction, pheromones, and taste, are crucial for the survival of most animals. There has long been a debate about whether different types of senses might influence each other. For instance, primates with a strong sense of vision are thought to have weakened olfactory abilities, although the oversimplified trade-off theor...
Tran, Linh N Sun, Connie K Struck, Travis J Sajan, Mathews Gutenkunst, Ryan N
Published in
Molecular Biology and Evolution
Inferring past demographic history of natural populations from genomic data is of central concern in many studies across research fields. Previously, our group had developed dadi, a widely used demographic history inference method based on the allele frequency spectrum (AFS) and maximum composite-likelihood optimization. However, dadi’s optimizatio...
Billenstein, Ronja J Höhna, Sebastian
Published in
Molecular Biology and Evolution
Bayesian coalescent skyline plot models are widely used to infer demographic histories. The first (non-Bayesian) coalescent skyline plot model assumed a known genealogy as data, while subsequent models and implementations jointly inferred the genealogy and demographic history from sequence data, including heterochronous samples. Overall, there exis...
Gaudry, Michael J Khudyakov, Jane Pirard, Laura Debier, Cathy Crocker, Daniel Crichton, Paul G Jastroch, Martin
Published in
Molecular Biology and Evolution
The molecular evolution of the mammalian heater protein UCP1 is a powerful biomarker to understand thermoregulatory strategies during species radiation into extreme climates, such as aquatic life with high thermal conductivity. While fully aquatic mammals lost UCP1, most semiaquatic seals display intact UCP1 genes, apart from large elephant seals. ...
Sacchi, Bianca Humphries, Zoë Kružlicová, Jana Bodláková, Markéta Pyne, Cassandre Choudhury, Baharul I Gong, Yunchen Bačovský, Václav Hobza, Roman Barrett, Spencer C H
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Published in
Molecular Biology and Evolution
Y chromosomes are thought to undergo progressive degeneration due to stepwise loss of recombination and subsequent reduction in selection efficiency. However, the timescales and evolutionary forces driving degeneration remain unclear. To investigate the evolution of sex chromosomes on multiple timescales, we generated a high-quality phased genome a...
