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 and genetic differentiation across the Arctic Ocean in tetraploid sea anemone Aulactinia stella

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

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

The dynamic evolution of panarthropod germ cell specification mechanisms

1. Jonchee A. Kao
2. Emily L. Rivard
3. Rishabh R. Kapoor
4. Cassandra G. Extavour

Reviewed by preLights

The primate Major Histocompatibility Complex as a case study of gene family evolution

1. Alyssa Lyn Fortier
2. Jonathan K Pritchard

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important manuscript presents a thorough analysis of the evolution of Major Histocompatibility Complex gene families across primates. A key strength of this analysis is the use of state-of-the-art phylogenetic methods to estimate rates of gene gain and loss, accounting for the notorious difficulty to properly assemble MHC genomic regions. Overall the evidence for the authors' conclusions – that there is considerable diversity in how MHC diversity is deployed across species – is compelling.

Reviewed by eLife

Coalescence and Translation: A Language Model for Population Genetics

1. Kevin Korfmann
2. Nathaniel S. Pope
3. Melinda Meleghy
4. Aurélien Tellier
5. Andrew D. Kern

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Tandem duplication of serpin genes yields functional variation and snake venom inhibitors

1. Meilyn S. Ward
2. Matthew L. Holding
3. Laura M. Haynes
4. David Ginsburg

Reviewed by preLights