Section edited by Maria Anisimova, Arndt von Haeseler and David Liberles
This section considers studies on genome evolution and systems biology approaches to determining evolutionary processes.
Section edited by Maria Anisimova, Arndt von Haeseler and David Liberles
This section considers studies on genome evolution and systems biology approaches to determining evolutionary processes.
Page 10 of 10
Evidence for historical, demographic and selective factors affecting enzyme evolution can be obtained by examining nucleotide sequence variation in candidate genes such as Lactate dehydrogenase (Ldh). Two closely...
Histone variants alter the composition of nucleosomes and play crucial roles in transcription, chromosome segregation, DNA repair, and sperm compaction. Modification of metazoan histone variant lineages occurs...
Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae is an economically important animal pathogen that causes contagious pleuropneumonia in pigs. Currently, the molecular evolutionary trajectories for this pathogenic bacterium remain...
Pathogens have represented an important selective force during the adaptation of modern human populations to changing social and other environmental conditions. The evolution of the immune system has therefore...
Since the discovery of the Malta fever agent, Brucella melitensis, in the 19th century, six terrestrial mammal-associated Brucella species were recognized over the next century. More recently the number of novel
The role of lateral gene transfer (LGT) in the evolution of microorganisms is only beginning to be understood. While most LGT events occur between closely related individuals, inter-phylum and inter-domain LGT...
Catenin is a gene family composed of three subfamilies; p120, beta and alpha. Beta and p120 are homologous subfamilies based on sequence and structural comparisons, and are members of the armadillo repeat prot...
Domain or gene fusion analysis is a bioinformatics method for detecting gene fusions in one organism by comparing its genome to that of other organisms. The occurrence of gene fusions suggests that the two ori...
Small insertions and deletions ("indels" with size ≦ 100 bp) whose lengths are not multiples of three (non-3n) are strongly constrained and depleted in protein-coding sequences. Such a constraint has never bee...
Cyanobacteria belong to an ancient group of photosynthetic prokaryotes with pronounced variations in their cellular differentiation strategies, physiological capacities and choice of habitat. Sequencing effort...
The Erythrinidae fish family is characterized by a large variation with respect to diploid chromosome numbers and sex-determining systems among its species, including two multiple X1X2Y sex systems in Hoplias mal...
Escherichia coli is one of the best studied organisms in all of biology, but its phylogenetic structure has been difficult to resolve with current data and analytical techniques. We analyzed single nucleotide pol...
Several susceptibility genetic variants for autoimmune diseases have been identified. A subset of these polymorphisms displays an opposite risk profile in different autoimmune conditions. This observation open...
Genome wide analysis of variation within a species can reveal the evolution of fundamental biological processes such as mutation, recombination, and natural selection. We compare genome wide sequence differenc...
Chloroplasts and mitochondria evolved from the endosymbionts of once free-living eubacteria, and they transferred most of their genes to the host nuclear genome during evolution. The mechanisms used by plants ...
Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPD) catalyses one of the glycolytic reactions and is also involved in a number of non-glycolytic processes, such as endocytosis, DNA excision repair, and induction o...
We have recently discovered that the two tryptophans of human β2-microglobulin have distinctive roles within the structure and function of the protein. Deeply buried in the core, Trp95 is essential for folding...
Long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons are a widespread kind of transposable element present in eukaryotic genomes. They are a major factor in genome evolution due to their ability to create large scale m...
Divergence of transcription factor binding sites is considered to be an important source of regulatory evolution. The associations between transcription factor binding sites and phenotypic diversity have been ...
The Toll-like receptors represent a large superfamily of type I transmembrane glycoproteins, some common to a wide range of species and others are more restricted in their distribution. Most members of the Tol...
Cellular ATP levels are generated by glucose-stimulated mitochondrial metabolism and determine metabolic responses, such as glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) from the β-cells of pancreatic islets. We...
Microinversions are cytologically undetectable inversions of DNA sequences that accumulate slowly in genomes. Like many other rare genomic changes (RGCs), microinversions are thought to be virtually homoplasy-...
The last universal common ancestor represents the primordial cellular organism from which diversified life was derived. This urancestor accumulated genetic information before the rise of organismal lineages an...
Porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) represent remnants of an exogenous form that have become integrated in the domestic pig (Sus scrofa) genome. Although they are usually inactive, the capacity of γ1 ERVs to ...
The Hemichordata comprises solitary-living Enteropneusta and colonial-living Pterobranchia, sharing morphological features with both Chordata and Echinodermata. Despite their key role for understanding deutero...
Stearoyl-CoA desaturases (SCDs) are key enzymes involved in de novo monounsaturated fatty acid synthesis. They catalyze the desaturation of saturated fatty acyl-CoA substrates at the delta-9 position, generating ...
The wheat tribe Triticeae (Poaceae) is a diverse group of grasses representing a textbook example of reticulate evolution. Apart from globally important grain crops, there are also wild grasses which are of gr...
Recent advances in comparative genomics have considerably improved our knowledge of the evolution of mammalian karyotype architecture. One of the breakthroughs was the preferential localization of evolutionary...
Hybridization and polyploidy are potent forces that have regularly stimulated plant evolution and adaptation. Dactylorhiza majalis s.s., D. traunsteineri s.l. and D. ebudensis are three allopolyploid species of a...
Major intrinsic proteins (MIPs) also named aquaporins form channels facilitating the passive transport of water and other small polar molecules across membranes. MIPs are particularly abundant and diverse in t...
Species generally have a fixed number of chromosomes in the cell nuclei while between-species differences are common and often pronounced. These differences could have evolved through multiple speciation event...
The SLC11A1/Nramp1 and SLC11A2/Nramp2 genes belong to the SLC11/Nramp family of transmembrane divalent metal transporters, with SLC11A1 being associated with resistance to pathogens and SLC11A2 involved in intest...
Euglenophytes are a group of photosynthetic flagellates possessing a plastid derived from a green algal endosymbiont, which was incorporated into an ancestral host cell via secondary endosymbiosis. However, th...
An increasing number of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been identified recently. Different from all the others that function in cis to regulate local gene expression, the newly identified HOTAIR is located be...
A gene's position in regulatory, protein interaction or metabolic networks can be predictive of the strength of purifying selection acting on it, but these relationships are neither universal nor invariably st...
Urea amidolyase breaks down urea into ammonia and carbon dioxide in a two-step process, while another enzyme, urease, does this in a one step-process. Urea amidolyase has been found only in some fungal species...
Polyploidy has long been recognized as playing an important role in plant evolution. In flowering plants, the major route of polyploidization is suggested to be sexual through gametes with somatic chromosome n...
Previously, we described the heat shock response in dipteran species belonging to the family Stratiomyidae that develop in thermally and chemically contrasting habitats including highly aggressive ones. Althou...
Genes involved in post-mating processes of multiple mating organisms are known to evolve rapidly due to coevolution driven by sexual conflict among male-female interacting proteins. In the malaria mosquito Anophe...
The Immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) 3' Regulatory Region (3'RR), located at the 3' of the constant alpha gene, plays a crucial role in immunoglobulin production. In humans, there are 2 copies of the 3'RR, eac...
Ammonium is one of the major forms in which nitrogen is available for plant growth. OsAMT1;1 is a high-affinity ammonium transporter in rice (Oryza sativa L.), responsible for ammonium uptake at low nitrogen conc...
Pyrin-only protein 2 (POP2) is a small human protein comprised solely of a pyrin domain that inhibits NF-κB p65/RelA and blocks the formation of functional IL-1β processing inflammasomes. Pyrin proteins are ab...
Two component systems (TCS) are signal transduction pathways which typically consist of a sensor histidine kinase (HK) and a response regulator (RR). In this study, we have analyzed the evolution of TCS of the...
Model violations constitute the major limitation in inferring accurate phylogenies. Characterizing properties of the data that are not being correctly handled by current models is therefore of prime importance...
Corticosteroid receptors include mineralocorticoid (MR) and glucocorticoid (GR) receptors. Teleost fishes have a single MR and duplicate GRs that show variable sensitivities to mineralocorticoids and glucocort...
Ribonucleotide reduction is the only de novo pathway for synthesis of deoxyribonucleotides, the building blocks of DNA. The reaction is catalysed by ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs), an ancient enzyme family comp...
For BMC Evolutionary Biology (former title)
2022 Citation Impact
3.4 - 2-year Impact Factor
3.6 - 5-year Impact Factor
1.061 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
0.968 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)
2022 Speed
22 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
155 days submission to accept (Median)
2022 Usage
1,809,941 downloads
18,359 Altmetric mentions
Transparency and Openness
TOP Factor score - 9
Peer Community In
BMC Ecology and Evolution welcomes submissions of pre-print manuscripts recommended by the Peer Community In (PCI) platform. The journal may use PCI reviews and recommendations for the review process if appropriate. For instructions to submit your PCI recommended article, please click here. To find out more, please read our blog.