Epistasis refers to the influence of one genomic mutation or variant on the phenotypic effects of another mutation or variant. Based on available evidence and theory, this phenomenon has a major influence on evolutionary trajectories for organisms of all...
A major problem confronting physicians, nurses, and other hospital personnel is transmission of pathogens among inpatients or between medical personnel and inpatients (in either direction). A crucial component in efforts to control such infectious outbreaks in...
A paper recently appearing in Science (Näsvall et al. 2012) offers a new insights into the mechanisms by which gene duplication can lead to new genes, gene products, and functions. The new scheme is termed the innovation-amplification-divergence (IAD) model. The...
Peter and Rosemary Grant have been responsible for what must be among the longest-running continuous field studies in evolutionary biology (2011). It will reach forty years in 2013. In this work, the Grants closely follow multiple species of finches on the Galápagos...
The new tools for determining nucleotide sequences for whole genomes can sometimes present a problem of data analysis: How can mutations that influence important phenotypes be distinguished from mutations that may be of minimal or no impact on fitness, so-called...
