Related papers: Biology's next revolution
The purpose of this roadmap article is to draw attention to a paradigm shift in our understanding of evolution towards a perspective of ecological-evolutionary feedback, highlighted through two recent highly simplified examples of rapid…
The biological world, especially its majority microbial component, is strongly interacting and may be dominated by collective effects. In this review, we provide a brief introduction for statistical physicists of the way in which living…
Unraveling the evolutionary forces shaping bacterial diversity can today be tackled using a growing amount of genomic data. While the genome of eukaryotes is highly stable, bacterial genomes from cells of the same species highly vary in…
How does the interplay between selection, mutation and horizontal gene transfer modify the phenotypic distribution of a bacterial or cell population? While horizontal gene transfer, which corresponds to the exchange of genetic material…
Our view of the microbial world and its impact on human health is changing radically with the ability to sequence uncultured or unculturable microbes sampled directly from their habitats, ability made possible by fast and cheap next…
Anthropogenic changes of the biota and human hyper-dominance are modulating the evolution of life on our planet. Humankind has spread worldwide supported by cultural and technological knowledge, and has already modified uncountable…
The genome of bacterial species is much more flexible than that of eukaryotes. Moreover, the distributed genome hypothesis for bacteria states that the total number of genes present in a bacterial population is greater than the genome of…
In the past decade, advances in genome sequencing have allowed researchers to uncover the history of hybridization in diverse groups of species, including our own. Although the field has made impressive progress in documenting the extent of…
Cosmological discoveries over the past century have completely changed our picture of our place in the universe. New observations have a realistic chance of probing nature on heretofore unimaginable scales, and as a result are changing the…
Cooperation is a widespread natural phenomenon yet current evolutionary thinking is dominated by the paradigm of selfish competition. Recent advanced in many fronts of Biology and Non-linear Physics are helping to bring cooperation to its…
Although the role of lateral gene transfer is well recognized in the evolution of bacteria, it is generally assumed that it has had less influence among eukaryotes. To explore this hypothesis we compare the dynamics of genome evolution in…
A class of models for large-scale evolution and mass extinctions is presented. These models incorporate environmental changes on all scales, from influences on a single species to global effects. This is a step towards a unified picture of…
The premise of genetic analysis is that a causal link exists between phenotypic and allelic variation. Yet it has long been documented that mutant phenotypes are not a simple result of a single DNA lesion, but rather are due to interactions…
Horizontal gene transfer is an important factor in bacterial evolution that can act across species boundaries. Yet, we know little about rate and genomic targets of cross-lineage gene transfer, and about its effects on the recipient…
Recent research has extended methods from the fields of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics into other disciplines. Most notably, one recent work creates a unified theoretical framework to understand evolutionary biology, machine…
Nature (one's genes) and nurture (one's environment) jointly contribute to the formation and evolution of health and human capital over the life cycle. This complex interplay between genes and environment can be estimated and quantified…
Horizontal gene Transfer (HT) denotes the transmission of genetic material between two living organisms, while the vertical transmission refers to a DNA transfer from parents to their offspring. Consistent experimental evidence report that…
Transposable elements are DNA sequences that can move around to different positions in the genome. During this process, they can cause mutations, and lead to an increase in genome size. Despite representing a large genomic fraction,…
Most genes are part of larger families of evolutionary related genes. The history of gene families typically involves duplications and losses of genes as well as horizontal transfers into other organisms. The reconstruction of detailed gene…
Human activity has an enormous impact on Earth, changing organisms, environments and landscapes, leading to the decline of original ecosystems and irreversible changes that create new combinations of living beings and materials. As a…