Natural Selection

News Natural Selection

• Butterfly Study Reveals Traits and Genes Associated with Establishment of New Populations

  A team of scientists has discovered that descendants of "exploratory" butterflies that colonized new habitats differ genetically from their more cautious cousins. The team, led by James Marden, a professor of biology at Penn State University, and Christopher Wheat, a post-doctoral scholar working at more

• Selected hens give new genetic insights

  Studies of heavy, fast-growing hens and small, slow-growing hens provide important new knowledge on the origin of the genetic variation that has enabled them to adapt rapidly to new extreme environments. This is shown by new research findings published in PLOS Genetics. The studies have been made by more

• New details of an evolutionary mechanism

  Scientists in Munich report evidence that high concentrations of the molecular "chaperone" proteins GroEL and GroES – intracellular machines that can stabilize folding proteins under stress – play a critical role in increasing the maximum temperature at which E. coli bacteria can grow. Massively and more

Publications Natural Selection

• Coevolution and Life Cycle Specialization of Plant Cell Wall Degrading Enzymes in a Hemibiotrophic Pathogen

  Zymoseptoria tritici is an important fungal pathogen on wheat that originated in the Fertile Crescent. Its closely related sister species Z. pseudotritici and Z. ardabiliae infect wild grasses in the same region. This recently emerged host–pathogen system provides a rare opportunity to investigate more

• Selection for Replicases in Protocells

  by Ginestra Bianconi, Kun Zhao, Irene A. Chen, Martin A. Nowak We consider a world of nucleotide sequences and protocells. The sequences have the property of spontaneous self-replication. Some sequences - so-called replicases - have enzymatic activity in the sense of enhancing the replication rat more

• Evidence from a House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus) Spleen Transcriptome for Adaptive Evolution and Biased Gene Conversion in Passerine Birds

  Identifying genes influenced by natural selection can provide information about lineage-specific adaptations, and transcriptomes generated by next-generation sequencing are a useful resource for identifying such genes. Here, we utilize a spleen transcriptome for the house finch (Haemorhous mexicanu more

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