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.
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The plasminogen (PLG) activation system is composed by a series of serine proteases, inhibitors and several binding proteins, which together control the temporal and spatial generation of the active serine pro...
ALRs (AIM2-like Receptors) are germline encoded PRRs that belong to PYHIN gene family of cytokines, which are having signature N-terminal PYD (Pyrin, PAAD or DAPIN) domain and C-terminal HIN-200 (hematopoietic, i...
The Synurophyceae is one of most important photosynthetic stramenopile algal lineages in freshwater ecosystems. They are characterized by siliceous scales covering the cell or colony surface and possess plasti...
The highly polymorphic genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I are involved in defense against viruses and other intracellular pathogens. Although several studies found reduced MHC class I ...
Oligoadenylate synthetases (OASs) are widely distributed in Metazoa including sponges, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals and show large variation, with one to twelve members in any given species. Upon double-s...
The family of D-isomer specific 2-hydroxyacid dehydrogenases (2HADHs) contains a wide range of oxidoreductases with various metabolic roles as well as biotechnological applications. Despite a vast amount of bi...
Adaptation to local host plants may impact a pollinator’s population genetic structure by reducing gene flow and driving population genetic differentiation, representing an early stage of ecological speciation...
Liriodendron is a genus of Magnoliaceae, which consists of two relict species, Liriodendron chinense and L. tulipifera. Although the morphologies are highly similar, the two species exhibit different adaptive cap...
The standard genetic code (SGC) is a unique set of rules which assign amino acids to codons. Similar amino acids tend to have similar codons indicating that the code evolved to minimize the costs of amino acid...
Osteoglycin (OGN, a.k.a. mimecan) belongs to cluster III of the small leucine-rich proteoglycans (SLRP) of the extracellular matrix (ECM). In vertebrates OGN is a characteristic ECM protein of bone. In the pre...
Bdelloid rotifers are the oldest, most diverse and successful animal taxon for which males, hermaphrodites, and traditional meiosis are unknown. Their degenerate tetraploid genome, with 2–4 copies of most loci...
The ascomycete fungus Clonostachys rosea (order Hypocreales) can control several important plant diseases caused by plant pathogenic fungi and nematodes. Subtilisin-like serine proteases are considered to play an...
The degree by which mechanisms underlying phenotypic convergence are similar among taxa depends on the number of evolutionary paths available for selection to act upon. Likelihood of convergence will be influe...
Mitochondrial and plastid DNA fragments are continuously transferred into eukaryotic nuclear genomes, giving rise to nuclear copies of mitochondrial DNA (numts) and nuclear copies of plastid DNA (nupts). Numts...
Provision of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) in vertebrates occurs through the diet or via endogenous production from C18 precursors through consecutive elongations and desaturations. It has been...
Knowledge of population-level processes is essential to understanding the efficacy of selection operating within a species. However, attempts at estimating effective population sizes (Ne) are particularly challen...
Members of the Bacillus genus have been isolated from a variety of environments. However, the relationship between potential metabolism and the niche from which bacteria of this genus have been isolated has not b...
Confined within the freezing Southern Ocean, the Antarctic notothenioids have evolved to become both cold adapted and cold specialized. A marked signature of cold specialization is an apparent loss of the cell...
Disparity in the timing of biological events occurs across a variety of systems, yet the understanding of genetic basis underlying diverse phenologies remains limited. Variation in maturation timing occurs in ...
Myxozoa represents a diverse group of microscopic endoparasites whose life cycle involves two hosts: a vertebrate (usually a fish) and an invertebrate (usually an annelid worm). Despite lacking nearly all dist...
Phylogenetic relationships among Eastern Hemisphere cypresses, Western Hemisphere cypresses, junipers, and their closest relatives are controversial, and generic delimitations have been in flux for the past de...
As the topologies produced by previous molecular and morphological studies were contradictory and unstable (polytomy), evolutionary relationships within the Diplozoidae family and the Monogenea class (controve...
The adaptive immune system of vertebrates has an extraordinary potential to sense and neutralize foreign antigens entering the body. De novo evolution of genes implies that the genome itself expresses novel antig...
The majority of wood decomposing fungi are mushroom-forming Agaricomycetes, which exhibit two main modes of plant cell wall decomposition: white rot, in which all plant cell wall components are degraded, inclu...
Outbreaks caused by asexual lineages of fungal and oomycete pathogens are a continuing threat to crops, wild animals and natural ecosystems (Fisher MC, Henk DA, Briggs CJ, Brownstein JS, Madoff LC, McCraw SL, ...
Translation of specific mRNAs can be highly regulated in different cells, tissues or under pathological conditions. Ribosome heterogeneity can originate from variable expression or post-translational modificat...
An essential question in evolutionary biology is whether shifts in a set of polygenic behaviors share a genetic basis across species. Such a behavioral shift is seen in the cave-dwelling Mexican tetra, Astyanax m...
Advances in genomic technologies have expanded our ability to accurately and exhaustively detect natural genomic variants that can be applied in crop improvement and to increase our knowledge of plant evolutio...
C-to-U RNA editing in mitochondria and chloroplasts and the nuclear-encoded, RNA-binding PPR proteins acting as editing factors present a wide field of co-evolution between the different genetic systems in a p...
Unisexuals of the blue-spotted salamander complex are thought to reproduce by kleptogenesis. Genome exchanges associated with this sperm-dependent mode of reproduction are expected to result in a higher geneti...
Glycoside hydrolases of the GH9 family encode cellulases that predominantly function as endoglucanases and have wide applications in the food, paper, pharmaceutical, and biofuel industries. The partitioning of...
It is thought that after whole-genome duplications (WGDs), a large fraction of the duplicated gene copies is lost over time while few duplicates are retained. Which factors promote survival or death of a dupli...
Apoid wasps and bees (Apoidea) are an ecologically and morphologically diverse group of Hymenoptera, with some species of bees having evolved eusocial societies. Major problems for our understanding of the evo...
One explanation for the persistence of schizophrenia despite the reduced fertility of patients is that it is a by-product of recent human evolution. This hypothesis is supported by evidence suggesting that rec...
Complete mitochondrial (mt) genomes have been sequenced for thousands of animals and represent a molecule of choice for many evolutionary studies. Nevertheless, some animal groups have remained under-sampled. ...
The role of chromosomal arrangements in adaptation is supported by the repeatable clinal variation in inversion frequencies across continents in colonizing species such as Drosophila subobscura. However, there is...
Models for the origins of cultivated rice currently fall into two groups: ones that identify independent domestications of the indica, japonica and possibly also the aus types, and others that propose that the do...
Heterotrimeric G proteins are fundamental signaling proteins composed of three subunits, Gα and a Gβγ dimer. The role of Gα as a molecular switch is critical for transmitting and amplifying intracellular signa...
Genome reduction in intracellular pathogens and endosymbionts is usually compensated by reliance on the host for energy and nutrients. Free-living taxa with reduced genomes must however evolve strategies for g...
Protein-coding genes expressed in sperm evolve at different rates. To gain deeper insight into the factors underlying this heterogeneity we examined the relative importance of a diverse set of previously descr...
The CEA gene family is one of the most rapidly evolving gene families in the human genome. The founder gene of the family is thought to be an ancestor of the inhibitory immune checkpoint molecule CEACAM1. Compreh...
Complete mitochondrial (mt) genomes have been used extensively to test hypotheses about microevolution and to study population structure, phylogeography, and phylogenetic relationships of Anura at various taxo...
In sharks, chickens, rats, frogs, medaka and zebrafish there is haplotypic variation in MHC class I and closely linked genes involved in antigen processing, peptide translocation and peptide loading. At least ...
The study of ancient protein sequences is increasingly focused on the analysis of older samples, including those of ancient hominins. The analysis of such ancient proteomes thereby potentially suffers from “cr...
Exaggerated signals, such as brilliant colours, are usually assumed to evolve through antagonistic coevolution between senders and receivers, but the underlying genetic mechanisms are rarely known. Here we exp...
Due to the DNA triplet code, it is possible that the sequences of two or more protein-coding genes overlap to a large degree. However, such non-trivial overlaps are usually excluded by genome annotation pipeli...
Peroxiredoxins are ubiquitous thiol-dependent peroxidases that represent a major antioxidant defense in both prokaryotic cells and eukaryotic organisms. Among the six vertebrate peroxiredoxin isoforms, peroxir...
The nonparametric bootstrap is widely used to measure the branch support of phylogenetic trees. However, bootstrapping is computationally expensive and remains a bottleneck in phylogenetic analyses. Recently, ...
Universal stress proteins (USPs) are present in all domains of life. Their expression is upregulated in response to a large variety of stress conditions. The functional diversity found in this protein family, ...
Population genetics theory predicts an important role of differences in the effective population size (N e ) among species on shaping the accumulation of functional mutations...
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