Evolutionary Biology

Lifestyles shape genome size and gene content in fungal pathogens

1. Anna Fijarczyk
2. Pauline Hessenauer
3. Richard C Hamelin
4. Christian R Landry

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study addresses a topic that is frequently discussed in the literature but is under-assessed, namely correlations among genome size, repeat content, and pathogenicity in fungi. Contrary to previous assertions, the authors found that repeat content is not associated with pathogenicity. Rather, pathogenic lifestyle was found to be better explained by the number of protein-coding genes, with other genomic features associated with insect association status. The results are considered solid, although there remain concerns about potential biases stemming from the underlying data quality of the analyzed genomes.

Reviewed by eLife

A model for background selection in non-equilibrium populations

1. Gustavo V. Barroso
2. Aaron P. Ragsdale

Reviewed by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology

Sex chromosomes and chromosomal rearrangements are key to behavioural sexual isolation in Jaera albifrons marine isopods

1. Ambre Ribardiere
2. Claire Daguin-Thiebaut
3. Jerome Coudret
4. Gildas Le Corguille
5. Komlan Avia
6. Celine Houbin
7. Stephane Loisel
8. Pierre-Alexandre Gagnaire
9. Thomas Broquet

Reviewed by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology

Beyond venomous fangs: Uloboridae spiders have lost their venom but not their toxicity

1. Xiaojing Peng
2. Ludwig Dersch
3. Josephine Dresler
4. Tim Lüddecke
5. Tim Dederichs
6. Peter Michalik
7. Steve Peigneur
8. Jan Tytgat
9. Afrah Hassan
10. Antonio Mucciolo
11. Marc Robinson-Rechavi
12. Giulia Zancolli

Reviewed by preLights

Increased clonality, decreased allele diversity and high genetic structure in tetraploid sea anemone Aulactinia stella populations from North Pacific to Atlantic across the Arctic Ocean

1. Ekaterina Bocharova
2. Aleksandr Volkov
3. Solenn Stoeckel

Reviewed by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology

Assessing the potential of ancient protein sequences in the study of hominid evolution

1. Ioannis Patramanis
2. Laurits Skov
3. Enrico Cappellini
4. Fernando Racimo

Reviewed by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology

Evaluating the impact and detectability of mass extinctions on total-evidence dating

1. Minghao Du
2. Wenhui Wang
3. Jingqiang Tan
4. Joëlle Barido-Sottani

Reviewed by preLights

Fluidity and Predictability of Epistasis on an Intragenic Fitness Landscape

1. Sarvesh Baheti
2. Namratha Raj
3. Supreet Saini

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This paper addresses the significant question of quantifying epistasis patterns, which affect the predictability of evolution, by reanalyzing a recently published combinatorial deep mutational scan experiment. The findings are useful, showing that epistasis is fluid, i.e. strongly background dependent, but that fitness effects of mutations are statistically predictable based on the background fitness. While the general approach appears solid, some claims remain incompletely supported by the analysis, as arbitrary cutoffs are used and the description of methods lacks specifics. This analysis should be of interest to the community working on fitness landscapes.

Reviewed by eLife

Evidence of latency reshapes our understanding of Ebola virus reservoir dynamics

1. John T. McCrone
2. Guy Baele
3. Ifeanyi F. Omah
4. Eddy Kinganda-Lusamaki
5. Joseph A. Brew
6. Luiz M. Carvalho
7. Gytis Dudas
8. Placide Mbala-Kingebeni
9. Marc A. Suchard
10. Andrew Rambaut

Reviewed by PREreview

The evolution of gene expression in seasonal environments

1. Shuichi N Kudo
2. Yuka Ikezaki
3. Junko Kusumi
4. Hideki Hirakawa
5. Sachiko Isobe
6. Akiko Satake

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors collected time-course RNA-seq data from four tree species in natural environments and analyzed seasonal patterns of gene expression. This fundamental study substantially advances our understanding of how seasonal environments shape gene expression. The evolutionary effects of seasonal environments on gene expression are rarely studied at this scale and the dataset is extensive. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling, with caveats and limitations clearly described. The work will be of broad interest to colleagues studying evolution and gene expression.

Reviewed by eLife