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Tag: natural selection

  • This Week in Evolution
  • This Week in Evolution

TWiEVO 83: Evolution spreads its wings (and then loses them)

  • October 24, 2022
  • Tagged as: bird, evolution, evolution of flight, flightless bird, natural selection, passerine bird, powered flight

Florian Maderspacher from Current Biology joins Nels and Vincent to discuss a special issue of the journal on birds.

2 Replies
  • This Week in Evolution

TWiEVO 81: Evolution’s new and improved slime molds

  • August 24, 2022
  • Tagged as: Dictyostelium, evolution, gene duplication, mutation, natural selection, neofunctionality, slime mold

Nels and Vincent discuss how duplication of a gene encoding a transcription factor led to evolution of a novel cell type in the slime mold Dictyostelium.

2 Replies
  • This Week in Evolution
  • This Week in Evolution

TWiEVO 80: Viruses of a feather bottleneck together

  • August 1, 2022
  • Tagged as: evolution, influenza virus H5N1, mumps virus, mutation, natural selection, phylogenomics, SARS-CoV-2, transmission bottleneck, virus

Louise Moncla joins Nels and Vincent to review her use of genomics to understand emergence, evolution, and transmission of respiratory viruses including influenza virus H5N1, mumps virus, and SARS-CoV-2.

2 Replies
  • This Week in Evolution
  • This Week in Evolution

TWiEVO 79: When the immune system is away, SARS-CoV-2 will play

  • July 2, 2022
  • Tagged as: antibody evasion, chronic infection, coronavirus, COVID-19, evolution, fitness, immunocompromised, natural selection, pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, variants of concern

Nels and Vincent discuss an analysis of the drivers of evolution of SARS-CoV-2 during chronic infections, indicating that a tradeoff exists between antibody evasion and fitness.

3 Replies
  • This Week in Evolution

TWiEVO 78: The virus daily double

  • May 26, 2022
  • Tagged as: coronavirus, COVID-19, evolution, monkeypox, natural selection, negative selection, pandemic, positive selection, SARS-CoV-2, smallpox, spike protein, variants of concern

Nels and Vincent provide an update on cases of monkeypox, and summarize a biochemical view of three changes in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that may balance positive and negative selection.

1 Reply
  • This Week in Evolution
  • This Week in Evolution

TWiEVO 77: The mutations of our lives

  • April 26, 2022
  • Tagged as: age, cancer, evolution, germline mutation, mammal, mutation, mutation rate, natural selection, somatic mutation

Alex joins Nels and Vincent to discuss his work which demonstrates that somatic mutation rates scale with lifespan in mammals.

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  • Episode
  • This Week in Evolution
  • This Week in Evolution

TWiEVO 76: One-step symbiosis

  • March 22, 2022
  • Tagged as: E. coli, evolution, mutualism, natural selection, reduced genome, stinkbug, symbiont

Nels and Vincent describe how a single amino acid change can allow E. coli to replace the essential gut symbiont of the stinkbug Plautia stali.

1 Reply
  • Episode
  • This Week in Evolution

TWiEVO 74: On racism, not race with Joe Graves

  • February 3, 2022
  • Tagged as: evolution, natural selection, race, racism

Joe Graves joins Nels and Vincent to discuss his career in evolutionary biology and his recent book that answers questions about race and racism.

3 Replies
  • Episode

TWiEVO 73: With a little help from your hosts

  • December 28, 2021
  • Tagged as: coronavirus, COVID-19, evolution, fitness, natural selection, Omicron, pandemic, RNA insertion, SARS-CoV-2

Nels and Vincent review three aspects of SARS-CoV-2: phylogenetics of Omicron, a two-step fitness selection for SARS-CoV-2 variants, and putative RNA insertions from host genomes.

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  • Episode

TWiEVO 72: Echoes of evolution both shallow and deep

  • October 26, 2021
  • Tagged as: Archaea, bacteria, coronavirus, COVID-19, epidemic, evolution, lipid divide, membrane, natural selection, pandemic, positive selection

Nels and Vincent discuss evolutionary evidence for an epidemic of coronavirus infection over 20,000 years ago in East Asia, and reconstruction of the membrane differences between bacteria and Archaea reveals unexpected differences in permeability.

2 Replies
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