Evolutionary Biology

Admixture of evolutionary rates across a butterfly hybrid zone

1. Tianzhu Xiong
2. Xueyan Li
3. Masaya Yago
4. James Mallet

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The authors leverage theory, simulations, and empirical population genomics to evaluate what are the consequences of differences in substitution rates in hybridizing species. This is a largely overlooked phenomenon. This study highlights the issue and demonstrates that two hybridizing species of Papilio have differences in their substitution rates. The work will be of interest to a large group of evolutionary biologists, especially those studying evolution at the whole-genome level.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Widespread introgression across a phylogeny of 155 Drosophila genomes

1. Anton Suvorov
2. Bernard Y. Kim
3. Jeremy Wang
4. Ellie E. Armstrong
5. David Peede
6. Emmanuel R. R. D’Agostino
7. Donald K. Price
8. Peter Wadell
9. Michael Lang
10. Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo
11. Jean R. David
12. Dmitri Petrov
13. Daniel R. Matute
14. Daniel R. Schrider
15. Aaron A. Comeault

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The authors present an impressive view of introgression across the Drosophila clade. There is strong support for signals of introgression along numerous branches of the phylogeny. However, the placement of these introgression events on the phylogeny and their impact on genome-wide patterns of relatedness are less clear.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

The spatiotemporal patterns of major human admixture events during the European Holocene

1. Manjusha Chintalapati
2. Nick Patterson
3. Priya Moorjani

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This manuscript presents DATES, a method to infer the timing of admixture events using genetic data from present-day or ancient individuals. This is a robust method that is useful in the field of paleogenomics and outperforms existing methods. In this manuscript, DATES is applied to >1000 ancient human genomes to characterize major admixture events during the European Holocene. This work will be of interest to scholars in the fields of population genetics, paleogenomics, archeology, biological anthropology, and history.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Convergent mosaic brain evolution is associated with the evolution of novel electrosensory systems in teleost fishes

1. Erika L Schumacher
2. Bruce A Carlson

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This ms examines changes in brain region size in several groups of weakly electric fishes, the Mormyroidea, and the Gymnotiformes and weakly electric catfishes (Synodontis spp.), which evolved electroreception independently of mormyrids. These are an interesting group for examination of mosaic growth. Many analyses are thoughtful and well executed, but there is some concern about whether the observed volumetric decreases are a consequence of the method.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Squamation and scale morphology at the root of jawed vertebrates

1. Yajing Wang
2. Min Zhu

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This manuscript will be of strong interest to scientists studying the development of early jawed vertebrates, in particular the extent and structure of their dermal skeleton, but it will also interest a broader audience, given how it connects modern-day morphological techniques to paleobiology. The authors provide the most complete account to date of the body scales of an antiarch stem-group gnathostome; this is the first work to model in 3-D the entire scale cover of such a fossil fish. The authors show that the body scales are varied in form, regionalized and that they comprise two main tissue layers. Based on this they argue that these conditions are plesiomorphic for antiarchs and the gnathostome crown group.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Male rat leukocyte population dynamics predict a window for intervention in aging

1. Hagai Yanai
2. Christopher Dunn
3. Bongsoo Park
4. Christopher Coletta
5. Ross A McDevitt
6. Taylor McNeely
7. Michael Leone
8. Robert P Wersto
9. Kathy A Perdue
10. Isabel Beerman

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  Yanai et al. used flow cytometry and methlyation profiling to characterize populations of immune cells in the peripheral blood of male rats, finding age-dependent differences in cell composition and DNA methylation profiles, with marked changes occurring at specific time points (e.g., at 15 months and 24 months of age). This raises the possibility that interventions to modify blood aging may be most effective if done prior to these inflection points. This manuscript will be of broad interest to scientists in the geroscience realm and in particular to those using the aging rat as a model for the aging human hematopoietic system.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Phylogeny and Metadata Network Database for Epidemiologic Surveillance

1. Garrick Stott
2. Leke Lyu
3. Gabriella Veytsel
4. Jacky Kuo
5. Ryan Lewis
6. Armand Brown
7. Kayo Fujimoto
8. Justin Bahl

Reviewed by ScreenIT

Diversification dynamics in the Neotropics through time, clades, and biogeographic regions

1. Andrea S Meseguer
2. Alice Michel
3. Pierre-Henri Fabre
4. Oscar A Pérez Escobar
5. Guillaume Chomicki
6. Ricarda Riina
7. Alexandre Antonelli
8. Pierre-Olivier Antoine
9. Frédéric Delsuc
10. Fabien L Condamine

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This paper analyzes data from 150 previously published phylogenies of plants and animals from the Neotropics. A range of diversification models is fit in order to characterize patterns of diversification through time and across space. The authors reveal five biogeographic provinces within which long-term diversification has occurred, but they find that contrasting patterns of diversification for lineages are better explained by their phylogenetic relationship than by biogeographic province, such that the observed modern diversity of seed plants and tetrapods is a consequence of the groups' contrasting diversification dynamics. This paper is of potential interest to a broad audience of biologists who are working on the evolution of large-scale biodiversity, diversity hotspots, lineage diversification, and biogeography.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Functional and structural segregation of overlapping helices in HIV-1

1. Maliheh Safari
2. Bhargavi Jayaraman
3. Henni Zommer
4. Shumin Yang
5. Cynthia Smith
6. Jason D Fernandes
7. Alan D Frankel

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This study should be of broad interest to all virologists and many students of molecular genetics. It examines the constraints in a part of the HIV 1 genome that encodes important functional regions of two proteins, Rev and Env, in overlapping reading frames. It is convincingly shown that functional segregation occurs in a part of the overlap region that is critical for both proteins, which has important implications for HIV biology and may aid in the design of future HIV therapies.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Distinct evolutionary trajectories of SARS-CoV-2-interacting proteins in bats and primates identify important host determinants of COVID-19

1. Marie Cariou
2. Léa Picard
3. Laurent Guéguen
4. Stéphanie Jacquet
5. Andrea Cimarelli
6. Oliver I. Fregoso
7. Antoine Molaro
8. Vincent Navratil
9. Lucie Etienne

Reviewed by ScreenIT