An international team has reconstructed the genome organization of the earliest common ancestor of all mammals. The reconstructed ancestral genome could help in understanding the evolution of mammals and in conservation of modern animals. The earliest mammal ancestor likely looked like the fossil animal “Morganucodon” which lived about 200 million years ago. The work is published the scientific journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”.

A new study from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön and the University of Sussex in the UK shows that the age of a gene determines how fast they adapt. These findings demonstrate how gene evolution occurs as an “adaptive walk” through time.

Brain organoids provide insights into the evolution of the human brain

Is the geographical history of Sundaland closely linked to the evolution of the native Sumatran Cascade Frogs? This question was investigated by an international team led by herpetologist Umilaela Arifin of the LIB in their latest study, which was recently published in the scientific journal „Nature Scientific Report“. They assumed that these frogs have already dispersed in Sundaland way before the formation of the watersheds in this region, which took place during the Pleistocene – the Earth’s history about 2.5 million to 11,650 years ago. These findings challenge previous assumptions by experts.

A research team led by André Marques at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, has uncovered the profound effects of an atypical mode of chromosome arrangement on genome organization and evolution. Their findings are published in the journal Cell.

The worldwide distribution of one of the most important cereal pathogens is the result of human activity. Researchers at the University of Zurich have traced the history and spread of wheat powdery mildew along wheat trade routes and found that mixing of genetic ancestries of related powdery mildew species played a central role in the evolution and adaptation of the pathogen.

Gene duplication increased the diversity and specificity of enzymes that enable larvae of longhorned beetles to degrade important wood components. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, looked closer at a group of digestive enzymes found only in this beetle family. They resurrected the primordial enzymes, which first appeared in a common ancestor of longhorned beetles. Horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to the beetle as well as ancient and recent gene duplications promoted the evolution of this family of digestive enzymes and enabled longhorned beetles to degrade the main components of the plant cell wall.

Darwinian evolution is the process by which natural selection promotes genetic changes in traits that favour survival and reproduction of individuals. How fast evolution happens depends crucially on the abundance of its “fuel”: how much genetic difference there is in the ability to survive and reproduce. New research by an international research team with participation of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) has now discovered that the raw material for evolution is much more abundant in wild animals than previously believed. The findings were published in “Science”.

The ricefishes of Sulawesi have evolved a special type of brood care – pelvic brooding. Only a few gene loci determine the associated morphological traits, and the body of the fish is modular. An international team of researchers led by the LIB found that these two factors might have facilitated the evolution of the complex reproductive strategy of pelvic brooding. Because of the modularity of the body, the pelvic fin and the ribs in the mid-body region were able to adapt to pelvic brooding independently of other body parts. The results were recently published in the journal “Evolution”.

The genetic origins of the first agriculturalists in the Neolithic period long seemed to lie in the Near East. A new study published in the journal Cell shows that the first farmers actually represented a mixture of Ice Age hunter-gatherer groups, spread from the Near East all the way to south-eastern Europe. Researchers from the University of Bern and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics as well as from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the University of Fribourg were involved in the study. The method they developed could help reveal other human evolution patterns with unmatched resolution.

Stick insects that reproduce asexually cannot adapt as quickly in the course of evolution as sexually reproducing species, leading to a decrease in biological diversity / publication in ‘Science Advances’

Museum Koenig & University of Bonn

Whether nectar-sucking butterflies or blood-sucking mosquitoes – the ingestion of liquid food has long been known for many insects and other arthropods. A research team from Germany and Switzerland, led by the LIB and the University of Bonn, now shows that millipedes also use a sucking pump to ingest liquid food. A sucking pump has thus evolved independently in different groups of organisms over several 100 million years. In the process, astonishingly similar biomechanical solutions for ingesting liquid food have evolved in widely distant animal groups. The study results have been published in the journal Science Advances.

Hermaphroditic species face a fundamental question: how much energy should they expend on their male and female sides? Flatworms have found various answers to this question over the course of evolution – and the solutions are directly correlated with their mating behavior.

Researchers have developed a new protocol for monitoring acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common cancer in children, to inform more effective treatment strategies and detect disease recurrence. The personalized mediator probe PCR (MP PCR) uses multiple genomic cancer cell markers in a single assay and is simpler than current techniques. It improves monitoring clonal tumor evolution to detect a relapse sooner and avoid false negative results.

The evolution of aging is a particularly exciting field in theoretical evolutionary research. Scientists are trying to figure out why and when the phenomenon of aging developed over the course of evolution. Mathematical models can help to develop theories for a better understanding of aging. At the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, intensive research has also been carried out in this area in recent years in the Department of Evolutionary Theory.

Dr. Jonas Wolff vom Zoologischen Institut und Museum der Universität Greifswald erhält einen Starting Grant des Europäischen Forschungsrats (ERC) für sein Forschungsprojekt „Melding behavioural ecology and biomaterials research to track the evolution of mechanical super-performance of spider silk composites (SuPerSilk)“. Die Fördersumme beträgt rund 1,8 Millionen Euro. In dem Forschungsvorhaben geht es um Verhaltensökologie in Verbindung mit Biomaterialforschung mit dem Ziel, Verbundwerkstoffe aus Spinnenseide mit extrem hoher mechanischer Beanspruchbarkeit zu finden.

Characterizing the way, manner or pattern of evolution in tumors may be important for clinical forecasting and optimizing cancer treatment. Researchers are systematically examining how spatial structure influences tumor evolution. To do this the group developed a computational model with the flexibility to simulate alternative spatial structures and types of cell dispersal.

A study led by microbiologists at TU Dresden shows that methanogenic archaea do not always need to form methane to survive. It is possible to bypass methanogenesis with the seemingly simpler and more environmentally friendly acetogenic energy metabolism. These new findings provide evidence that methanogens are not nearly as metabolically limited as previously thought, and suggest that methanogenesis may have evolved from the acetyl-CoA pathway – an important step towards fully understanding the ecology, biotechnology, and evolution of archaea.

A skull two meters long, a total body length of 17 meters, a weight of 45 tons, fins that comb the sea – what sounds like a sperm whale is actually a reptile and lived around 250 million years ago. Now, an international team of researchers led by the Universities of Bonn and Mainz, as well as the Claremont Colleges and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, reports on this first giant animal that ever evolved. The study, published in the journal Science, shows that the ichthyosaurs evolved their impressive size within only three million years, much faster than the evolution of gigantism in today’s whales.

How complex innovations can emerge seemingly out of nowhere is a central question of evolutionary biology. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB) discovered new evidence that inflammatory immune responses can lay the foundation for the evolution of novel tissues. This process led to the emergence of a unique tissue called “plug”, which allows ricefish mothers to carry their offspring until hatching. Such an “innovative inflammation” not only revolutionized ricefish reproduction, but also played a key role in human evolution.

Lichens colonise all regions of the earth, from the poles to the equator. They are a symbiosis of fungi and algae. Secondary metabolites, so-called “lichen substances” produced by the fungal partner play a central role to maintain this symbiosis. An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Bayreuth, the University of Hohenheim, and the Bavarian State Natural Science Collections has now discovered how different climatic conditions influence the chemical properties of lichen substances and thus the evolution and global distribution of lichens. They present their research results in „Ecology Letters“.

Dresden and Munich researchers create compelling scenario for the evolution of membraneless microdroplets on Early Earth as the origin of life.

Gegenwärtig werden weltweit mehr als zehn Prozent aller Ehen zwischen Cousins und Cousinen ersten oder zweiten Grades geschlossen. Während diese Ehen in einigen Gesellschaften nicht ungewöhnlich sind, wird in anderen davon abgeraten. In einer neuen Studie untersuchten Forscher des Max-Planck-Instituts für evolutionäre Anthropologie in Leipzig und der University of Chicago nun, wie verbreitet eine so nahe Verwandtschaft beider Elternteile bei unseren Vorfahren war.

Buntbarsch-Weibchen können über die Zusammensetzung ihrer Eier beeinflussen, wie schnell ihre Nachkommen bei Gefahr die Flucht ergreifen können. Dies konnten Forschende unter der Leitung von Barbara Taborsky vom Institut für Ökologie und Evolution der Universität Bern anhand von Experimenten mit sozial brütenden Buntbarschen erstmals zeigen.

The cichlids of Lake Tanganyika in Africa are highly diverse – including with regard to sex chromosomes. These have changed extremely frequently in the course of the evolution of these fish and, depending on the species, can be of the type XY or ZW. This has been reported by a research team from the University of Basel and the Research Museum Koenig in Bonn in the scientific journal Science Advances.