Evolutionary genetics articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The lancelet, or amphioxus, is an extant basal chordate that diverged from other chordate lineages about 550 million years ago. Here the authors sequence and assemble the diploid genome of a male adult of the Chinese lancelet, B. belcheri, and highlight genomic features that may have played an important role in the origin and evolution of vertebrates.

    • Shengfeng Huang
    • , Zelin Chen
    •  & Anlong Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Populations of the pathogenic bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniaeconsist of distinct co-circulating lineages. Here, the authors show lineages are characterized by particular combinations of stable genomic islands, whereas prophage and restriction-modification systems vary over short timescales.

    • Nicholas J. Croucher
    • , Paul G. Coupland
    •  & William P. Hanage

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The genetic basis of sex chromosome pseudoautosomal regions (PAR) in organisms with female heterogamety is largely unknown. Smeds et al.provide the first molecular characterization of the PAR in birds with differentiated sex chromosomes and show a potential recombination hotspot and no evidence for strong sexual antagonism in this region.

    • Linnéa Smeds
    • , Takeshi Kawakami
    •  & Hans Ellegren

  • Article |

    Genes acquired by horizontal transfer must be incorporated into existing regulatory networks to become functional. Here, Will et al. show that conserved and horizontally acquired PhoP-regulated genes in Salmonellaare regulated by distinct mechanisms, defined by promoter architecture.

    • W. Ryan Will
    • , Denise H. Bale
    •  & Ferric C. Fang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plasmids are important for bacterial evolution but the evolutionary mechanisms behind their maintenance are unclear. Here the authors show that the interplay between compensatory adaptation and positive selection for plasmid-encoded antibiotic resistance determines plasmid persistence in P. aeruginosa.

    • A. San Millan
    • , R. Peña-Miller
    •  & R. C. MacLean

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plasmodium falciparum, known to cause malaria in humans, evolved from parasites of African Great Apes. Here, the authors compare the genome of the human parasite, P. falciparum, with those of two related chimpanzee parasites, P. reichenowi and P. gaboni, and provide insight into the genetic basis of P. falciparumadaptation to human hosts.

    • Thomas D. Otto
    • , Julian C. Rayner
    •  & Matthew Berriman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about the genetic basis of convergent evolution in deeply diverged species. Here, the authors show that variation in the WntAgene is associated with parallel wing pattern variation in two butterflies that diverged more than 65 million years ago.

    • Jason R. Gallant
    • , Vance E. Imhoff
    •  & Sean P. Mullen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) vary in chromosome number. Here, the authors sequence the genome of the Glanville fritillary butterfly, Melitaea cinxia, show it has the ancestral lepidopteran karyotype and provide insight into how chromosomal fusions have shaped karyotype evolution in butterflies and moths.

    • Virpi Ahola
    • , Rainer Lehtonen
    •  & Ilkka Hanski

  • Article |

    PRDM9 is a hybrid sterility gene in mammals; yet its role in primate evolution is unclear. Here, Schwartz et al. identify new PRDM9alleles in 64 primates and show rapid evolution throughout the primate lineage, which suggests that PRDM9 plays a major role in speciation.

    • Jerrod J. Schwartz
    • , David J. Roach
    •  & Jay Shendure

  • Article |

    The ability of a pathogen to adapt to new hosts affects its ability to spread in new environments. Here, Tsetsarkin et al.analysed mutations that enabled the chikungunya virus to adapt to a mosquito vector and predict that specific mutations will result in greater transmission efficiency.

    • Konstantin A. Tsetsarkin
    • , Rubing Chen
    •  & Scott C. Weaver

  • Article |

    The filamentous fungus Eurotium rubrum is one of the few organisms able to survive in the hypersaline Dead Sea. Here Kis-Papo et al. provide genomic and transcriptomic data that reveal potential cellular and metabolic mechanisms underlying adaptation to hypersaline stress in E. rubrum.

    • Tamar Kis-Papo
    • , Alfons R. Weig
    •  & Eviatar Nevo

  • Article |

    Haldane’s sieve is a theoretical prediction which states that recessive beneficial mutations rarely contribute to adaptation. Here, Gerstein et al. show rapid growth of Saccharomycescarrying recessive beneficial mutations, due to loss-of-heterozygosity when exposed to a fungicide and provide a mechanism for avoiding Haldane’s sieve.

    • A. C. Gerstein
    • , A. Kuzmin
    •  & S. P. Otto

  • Article |

    Cells can adapt rapidly to survive and efficiently exploit constantly changing environments by varying their mutation rate. Here the authors construct an in silicosystem to modulate mutation rate, and demonstrate that this method can be used in the laboratory to create specific phenotypes.

    • Howard H. Chou
    •  & Jay D. Keasling

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Unicellular ancestors of metazoans can provide significant insights into the origin of multicellularity. Suga et al. present the first complete genome of the filasterean Capsaspora owczarzakiand suggest an evolutionary mechanism for the transition from unicellular protists to metazoans.

    • Hiroshi Suga
    • , Zehua Chen
    •  & Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo

  • Article |

    The mammalian transcription factors Oct4 and Pou2 are implicated in germ cell pluripotency induction and maintenance. Tapia and colleagues find that axolotl Pou2 and Oct4 reprogram mouse and human fibroblasts to a pluripotent state, suggesting ancestral Oct4 and Pou2 gene function is evolutionarily conserved.

    • Natalia Tapia
    • , Peter Reinhardt
    •  & Hans R. Schöler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    GALgenes enhance their own transcription via the transcription factor Gal4p, and the number of Galp4 sites in a promoter is expected to strengthen the feedback. In this study, Hsuet al. show that instead the feedback loops are activated by genes that have frequent bursts of expression and fast RNA decay kinetics.

    • Chieh Hsu
    • , Simone Scherrer
    •  & Attila Becskei

  • Article |

    A genetic variation in the horsemyostatingene is found at a very high frequency in the best Thoroughbred sprinters. This study shows, using molecular and pedigree data from modern and historic horses, that a single introduction of the variant occurred at the foundation stages of the Thoroughbred from a British native mare.

    • Mim A. Bower
    • , Beatrice A. McGivney
    •  & Emmeline W. Hill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In vertebrates parasite-mediated selection is thought to maintain polymorphism in MHC genes where specific resistance MHC alleles increase under emerging selection. Here, experimental evidence is shown from six stickleback fish populations that varying parasite selection helps maintain MHC polymorphism.

    • Christophe Eizaguirre
    • , Tobias L. Lenz
    •  & Manfred Milinski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Saccharomycesyeasts can produce ethanol from sugars in the presence of oxygen. In this study, the authors demonstrate thatDekkera bruxellensis, a distantly related yeast, can also produce and consume ethanol due to the loss of a cis-regulatory element from the promoters of genes crucial for respiration.

    • Elżbieta Rozpędowska
    • , Linda Hellborg
    •  & Jure Piškur

  • Article |

    Matrilocal and patrilocal populations are predicted to have greater genetic diversity in mitochondrial DNA and the Y-chromosome, respectively. Here, no difference in the diversity of the Y-chromosome was found in two such groups, suggesting that local diversity was caused by male gene flow in expanding populations.

    • Ellen Dröfn Gunnarsdóttir
    • , Madhusudan R. Nandineni
    •  & Mark Stoneking

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Organisms are expected to adapt to climate change because of selection pressures. Here, the authors demonstrate that brown morphs of Finnish owls are selected against in winters with plentiful snow, and concordantly, increasing winter temperatures and lower snow fall results in the selection of the brown morph.

    • Patrik Karell
    • , Kari Ahola
    •  & Jon E. Brommer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sixty years ago it was suggested that the sickle cell disease mutation survives because the heterozygous genotype confers resistance to malaria, resulting in correlation of the two geographical distributions. The authors use a new global assembly of sickle allele frequencies to support this hypothesis at the global scale.

    • Frédéric B. Piel
    • , Anand P. Patil
    •  & Simon I. Hay

Browse broader subjects

Browse Evolutionary genetics across other nature.com journals