337 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 in house mice, both genetic factors and maternal environmental effects interact to shape adaptive body size variation, with maternal conditions significantly influencing early-life growth through trans-acting gene expression changes linked to nutrient signaling, while genetic divergence is driven by cis-regulated loci.
This study establishes a robust phylogenomic framework for yellow-green algae (Xanthophyceae) using multi-organellar datasets to reveal that the independent evolution of multicellularity in this lineage is consistently associated with a shift from multiple autospore-type propagules to single monospore- and akinete-type propagules.
Using whole-genome sequencing of 119 grey seals, this study reveals that the Baltic and North Atlantic subspecies diverged approximately 10,000 years ago due to historical hunting-induced isolation and local adaptation to environmental differences, but are now experiencing renewed contact, hybridization, and altered gene flow driven by recent population recovery.
This study overturns the long-held dogma that archaea exclusively possess class one CCA-adding enzymes by revealing widespread, functional class two enzymes of bacterial origin within Asgard archaea, thereby providing molecular evidence for the early integration of bacterial genes into the eukaryotic lineage prior to eukaryogenesis.
This study demonstrates that in *Brassica rapa*, physical interactions between pollen tubes and pistil tissues after pollen deposition mediate cryptic female choice by enabling plants to bias fertilization success toward specific donors based on pollen tube growth trajectories.
Through experimental evolution in yeast, researchers demonstrated that collective-level selection can drive the emergence of a new evolutionary individual by forcing separate replicators to recombine into stable chimeric plasmids, thereby establishing heredity as a derived consequence of selection rather than a prerequisite.
This study reveals that the mammalian proinflammatory receptor TREM-1 has undergone rapid, pathogen-driven positive selection, particularly in primates, rodents, and bats, leading to structural variations that likely alter its recognition of host and microbial ligands.
By integrating a quantitative genetic model with eco-evolutionary feedbacks, this study demonstrates that population persistence under gradual environmental change exhibits bistability, meaning extinction can occur even below the critical rate of change if initial population size and genetic variance are insufficient to overcome transient dynamics.
The paper introduces HiDenSeq, a DNA-barcoded Luria-Delbrück assay that leverages deep sequencing to resolve adaptation statistics over four orders of magnitude, enabling the direct quantification and differentiation of distinct adaptive mechanisms such as mutator alleles and induced mutagenesis in evolving populations.
ProtFinder is a novel, transfer learning-based machine learning framework that significantly outperforms existing methods in accuracy and speed for selecting protein substitution, rate heterogeneity, and frequency models on real datasets.