All Outputs (17)

A burst of genomic innovation at the origin of placental mammals mediated embryo implantation (2023)
Journal Article

The origin of embryo implantation in mammals ~148 million years ago was a dramatic shift in reproductive strategy, yet the molecular changes that established mammal implantation are largely unknown. Although progesterone receptor signalling predates... Read More about A burst of genomic innovation at the origin of placental mammals mediated embryo implantation.

Improving Orthologous Signal and Model Fit in Datasets Addressing the Root of the Animal Phylogeny (2023)
Journal Article

There is conflicting evidence as to whether Porifera (sponges) or Ctenophora (comb jellies) comprise the root of the animal phylogeny. Support for either a Porifera-sister or Ctenophore-sister tree has been extensively examined in the context of mode... Read More about Improving Orthologous Signal and Model Fit in Datasets Addressing the Root of the Animal Phylogeny.

Filtering artifactual signal increases support for Xenacoelomorpha and Ambulacraria sister relationship in the animal tree of life (2022)
Journal Article

Conflicting studies place a group of bilaterian invertebrates containing xenoturbellids and acoelomorphs, the Xenacoelomorpha, as either the primary emerging bilaterian phylum or within Deuterostomia, sister to Ambulacraria. Although their placement... Read More about Filtering artifactual signal increases support for Xenacoelomorpha and Ambulacraria sister relationship in the animal tree of life.

Adaptive Evolution in TRIF Leads to Discordance between Human and Mouse Innate Immune Signaling (2021)
Journal Article

The TIR domain-containing adapter inducing IFN-β (TRIF) protein is an innate immune system protein that mediates the MyD88-independent toll-like receptor response pathway in mice and humans. Previously, we identified positive selection at seven disti... Read More about Adaptive Evolution in TRIF Leads to Discordance between Human and Mouse Innate Immune Signaling.

Ribosome heterogeneity in Drosophila melanogaster gonads through paralog-switching (2021)
Journal Article

Ribosomes have long been thought of as homogeneous macromolecular machines, but recent evidence suggests they are heterogeneous and could be specialised to regulate translation. Here, we have characterised ribosomal protein heterogeneity across 4 tis... Read More about Ribosome heterogeneity in Drosophila melanogaster gonads through paralog-switching.

The role of CAPG in molecular communication between the embryo and the uterine endometrium: Is its function conserved in species with different implantation strategies? (2020)
Journal Article

© 2020. The Authors. The FASEB Journal published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology During the preimplantation period of pregnancy in eutherian mammals, transcriptional and proteomic change... Read More about The role of CAPG in molecular communication between the embryo and the uterine endometrium: Is its function conserved in species with different implantation strategies?.

New missense variants in RELT causing hypomineralised amelogenesis imperfecta (2020)
Journal Article

© 2020 The Authors. Clinical Genetics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Amelogenesis imperfecta (AI) is a heterogeneous group of genetic diseases characterised by dental enamel malformation. Pathogenic variants in at least 33 genes cause syndromi... Read More about New missense variants in RELT causing hypomineralised amelogenesis imperfecta.

Strigolactone synthesis is ancestral in land plants, but canonical strigolactone signalling is a flowering plant innovation (2019)
Journal Article

Background Strigolactones (SLs) are an important class of carotenoid-derived signalling molecule in plants, which function both as exogenous signals in the rhizosphere and as endogenous plant hormones. In flowering plants, SLs are synthesized by a c... Read More about Strigolactone synthesis is ancestral in land plants, but canonical strigolactone signalling is a flowering plant innovation.

Gene Fusions derived by transcriptional readthrough are Driven by Segmental Duplication in Human (2019)
Journal Article

Gene fusion occurs when two or more individual genes with independent open reading frames becoming juxtaposed under the same open reading frame creating a new fused gene. A small number of gene fusions described in detail have been associated with no... Read More about Gene Fusions derived by transcriptional readthrough are Driven by Segmental Duplication in Human.

Return to the sea, get huge, beat cancer: an analysis of cetacean genomes including an assembly for the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) (2019)
Journal Article

Cetaceans are a clade of highly specialized aquatic mammals that include the largest animals that have ever lived. The largest whales can have ~1000X more cells than a human, with long lifespans, leaving them theoretically susceptible to cancer. Howe... Read More about Return to the sea, get huge, beat cancer: an analysis of cetacean genomes including an assembly for the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae).

Paternally expressed imprinted genes under positive Darwinian selection in Arabidopsis thaliana (2019)
Journal Article

Genomic imprinting is an epigenetic phenomenon where autosomal genes display uniparental expression depending on whether they are maternally or paternally inherited. Genomic imprinting can arise from parental conflicts over resource allocation to the... Read More about Paternally expressed imprinted genes under positive Darwinian selection in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Inadvertent Paralog Inclusion Drives Artifactual Topologies and Timetree Estimates in Phylogenomics (2019)
Journal Article

Increasingly, large phylogenomic datasets include transcriptomic data from non-model organisms. This has allowed controversial and unexplored evolutionary relationships in the tree of life to be addressed but also increases the risk of inadvertent in... Read More about Inadvertent Paralog Inclusion Drives Artifactual Topologies and Timetree Estimates in Phylogenomics.

Reply to ‘The population genetics of pangenomes’ (2017)
Journal Article

Why prokaryotes have pangenomes (2017)
Journal Article

The existence of large amounts of within-species genome content variability is puzzling. Population genetics tells us that fitness effects of new variants—either deleterious, neutral or advantageous—combined with the long-term effective population si... Read More about Why prokaryotes have pangenomes.

Evolution of sweet taste perception in hummingbirds by transformation of the ancestral umami receptor (2014)
Journal Article

Sensory systems define an animal's capacity for perception and can evolve to promote survival in new environmental niches. We have uncovered a noncanonical mechanism for sweet taste perception that evolved in hummingbirds since their divergence from... Read More about Evolution of sweet taste perception in hummingbirds by transformation of the ancestral umami receptor.

Population genomics reveal recent speciation and rapid evolutionary adaptation in polar bears (2014)
Journal Article

Polar bears are uniquely adapted to life in the High Arctic and have undergone drastic physiological changes in response to Arctic climates and a hyperlipid diet of primarily marine mammal prey. We analyzed 89 complete genomes of polar bear and brown... Read More about Population genomics reveal recent speciation and rapid evolutionary adaptation in polar bears.

Heterogeneous models place the root of the placental mammal phylogeny (2013)
Journal Article

Heterogeneity among life traits in mammals has resulted in considerable phylogenetic conflict, particularly concerning the position of the placental root. Layered upon this are gene-and lineage-specific variation in amino acid substitution rates and... Read More about Heterogeneous models place the root of the placental mammal phylogeny.