389 papers
Evolutionary biology explores the dynamic history of life on Earth, tracing how species change, adapt, and diversify over time. This field investigates the mechanisms driving everything from the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria to the complex social behaviors of primates, revealing the deep connections that bind all living organisms together.
On Gist.Science, we ensure these groundbreaking discoveries remain accessible by processing every new preprint uploaded to bioRxiv in this category. Our team generates both plain-language overviews and detailed technical summaries for each paper, bridging the gap between raw research and public understanding without requiring a specialized background.
Below are the latest studies in evolutionary biology, offering fresh insights into the ongoing story of life.
This study demonstrates that parasites evolving at epidemic fronts undergo eco-evolutionary feedbacks where selection for host dispersal leads to reduced virulence and increased infectivity, ultimately accelerating the speed of epidemic spread.
By leveraging telomere-to-telomere primate genomes and long-read data, this study establishes a comparative framework revealing that tandem repeats are subject to both stabilizing and directional selection, with specific signatures of adaptive evolution in neural development and gene regulation distinguishing humans from chimpanzees.
This study reveals that ultraconserved human histone genes exhibit unexpectedly high germline mutation rates driven by AID/APOBEC enzymes, leading to various diseases, and introduces the HistMTR framework to effectively characterize the pathogenicity of these mutations.
This paper proposes a computationally tractable inference framework for estimating fine-resolution, time-varying migration rates by deriving evolution equations for pairwise genealogical processes under the structured serial coalescent that decouple migration from coalescence, thereby addressing the identifiability challenges in demographic inference with spatiotemporal genomic data.
This study identifies cysteine-rich repeats (CysRReps) as a universal molecular marker that traces widespread horizontal gene transfers from diverse bacteria, archaea, and viruses to eukaryotes, suggesting a common mechanism facilitating cross-domain genetic exchange.
This study identifies a rare, recessive deletion of the BZ1 gene as the specific genetic cause of anthocyanin loss in *Ipomoea hederacea*, providing a unique model to isolate and study the fitness effects of anthocyanin biosynthesis without confounding impacts on other flavonoid pathways.
By integrating single-cell expression data with biophysical modeling, this study demonstrates that while gene expression parameters evolve through coordinated evolutionary systems drift to maintain mean levels, transcriptional bursting rates are subject to strong selective constraints likely driven by the need to minimize expression noise.
This study reveals that the endangered Devils Hole pupfish, despite having extremely low genetic diversity and high fixed genetic load from long-term small population size, continues to suffer significant premature embryonic death driven by inbreeding and a specific recessive lethal haplotype containing cardiomyopathy-associated mutations.
This paper introduces a coevolution-aware ancestral sequence reconstruction framework that integrates phylogenetic inference with Direct Coupling Analysis to enforce epistatic constraints, thereby generating more accurate and functionally plausible ancestral protein ensembles that overcome the limitations of traditional independent-site models.
This study demonstrates that environmental gradients across Benin drive distinct, climate-adaptive phenotypic variations in Muscovy ducks, providing empirical evidence to integrate animal genetic resource management into national and regional climate adaptation policies to safeguard food security.