Publications related to Evidence of common descent

Industrial Biotechnology Conservation Processes: Similarities with Natural Long-Term Preservation of Biological Organisms

Philippe Abdel Sayed, Corinne Scaletta, Lee Ann Laurent-Applegate, Nathalie Hirt-Burri, Laurent Alexis Clément Vannay, Alexis Laurent

Cryopreservation and lyophilization processes are widely used for conservation purposes in the pharmaceutical, biotechnological, and food industries or in medical transplantation. Such processes deal with extremely low temperatures (e.g., -196 degrees C) a ...

MDPI2023

On the Double Descent of Random Features Models Trained with SGD

Volkan Cevher, Fanghui Liu

We study generalization properties of random features (RF) regression in high dimensions optimized by stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in under-/overparameterized regime. In this work, we derive precise non-asymptotic error bounds of RF regression under b ...

2022

Population structure and signals of local adaptation in Eugenia uniflora (Myrtaceae), a widely distributed species in the Atlantic Forest

Elia Vajana

Evolutionary diversity in species can arise in many ways, including local adaptation. Despite the global importance of tropical forest ecosystems, few studies have explored patterns of local adaptation in tropical tree species. We investigated population g ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2022

Hand pose selection in a bimanual fine-manipulation task

Aude Billard, Kunpeng Yao

Many daily tasks involve the collaboration of both hands. Humans dexterously adjust hand poses and modulate the forces exerted by fingers in response to task demands. Hand pose selection has been intensively studied in unimanual tasks, but little work has ...

2021

Phenotypic plasticity versus ecotypic differentiation under recurrent summer drought in two drought-tolerant pine species

Christoph Bachofen

Despite worldwide reports of high tree mortality, growing evidence indicates that many tree species are well adapted to survive repeated dry spells. The drought resilience of trees is related to their phenotypic plasticity and ecotypic differentiation. Whe ...

WILEY2021

Genetic signatures of divergent selection in European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) are associated with the variation in temperature and precipitation across its distribution range

Elia Vajana

High genetic variation and extensive gene flow may help forest trees with adapting to ongoing climate change, yet the genetic bases underlying their adaptive potential remain largely unknown. We investigated range-wide patterns of potentially adaptive gene ...

WILEY2021

Genomic Analysis of European Drosophila melanogaster Populations Reveals Longitudinal Structure, Continent-Wide Selection, and Previously Unknown DNA Viruses

Bart Deplancke

Genetic variation is the fuel of evolution, with standing genetic variation especially important for short-term evolution and local adaptation. To date, studies of spatiotemporal patterns of genetic variation in natural populations have been challenging, a ...

2020

Linking micro and macroevolution in the presence of migration

Sophie Myriam Hautphenne, Laurent Lehmann, Nicolas Salamin

Understanding macroevolutionary patterns is central to evolutionary biology. This involves the process of divergence within a species, which starts at the microevolutionary level, for instance, when two sub populations evolve towards different phenotypic o ...

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2020

Global radiation in a rare biosphere soil diatom

Tyler Joe Kohler

Soil micro-organisms drive the global carbon and nutrient cycles that underlie essential ecosystem functions. Yet, we are only beginning to grasp the drivers of terrestrial microbial diversity and biogeography, which presents a substantial barrier to under ...

Nature Research2020

The virtuous cycle of human genetics and mouse models in drug discovery

Johan Auwerx

Ongoing studies in many species seek to understand the origins, architecture and consequences of phenotypic variation under normal and dysfunctional conditions, with the aim of identifying targets for intervention that can prevent, stabilize or reverse dis ...

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP2019

Linking a mutation to survival in wild mice

Jeffrey David Jensen, Matthieu Foll, Susanne Petra Pfeifer, Stefan Jean Laurent

Adaptive evolution in new or changing environments can be difficult to predict because the functional connections between genotype, phenotype, and fitness are complex. Here, we make these explicit connections by combining field and laboratory experiments i ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science2019

A unified measure of linear and nonlinear selection on quantitative traits

Yoav Zemel

Lande and Arnold's approach to quantifying natural selection has become a standard tool in evolutionary biology due to its simplicity and generality. It treats linear and nonlinear selection in two separate frameworks, generating coefficients of selection ...

Wiley2017

Olfactory receptor pseudo-pseudogenes

Matteo Dal Peraro, Benoîte Bargeton

Pseudogenes are generally considered to be non-functional DNA sequences that arise through nonsense or frame-shift mutations of protein-coding genes(1). Although certain pseudogene-derived RNAs have regulatory roles(2), and some pseudogene fragments are tr ...

Nature Publishing Group2016

Neutral and Adaptive Drivers of Microgeographic Genetic Divergence within Continuous Populations: The Case of the Neotropical Tree Eperua falcata (Aubl.)

Matthieu Foll

Background In wild plant populations, genetic divergence within continuous stands is common, sometimes at very short geographical scales. While restrictions to gene flow combined with local inbreeding and genetic drift may cause neutral differentiation amo ...

Public Library of Science2015

Positive Selection Drives Preferred Segment Combinations during Influenza Virus Reassortment

Jeffrey David Jensen, Matthieu Foll

Influenza A virus (IAV) has a segmented genome that allows for the exchange of genome segments between different strains. This reassortment accelerates evolution by breaking linkage, helping IAV cross species barriers to potentially create highly virulent ...

Oxford University Press2015

Geneva, from car-euphoria to opening of the borders

Hanja-Niriana Maksim

Over the last two decades, urban planning has been reapplied in several European countries: common tendencies that underline the reform of planning procedures are the generalization of sustainable development and the reorganization of local government. Bri ...

Delft University of Technology2012

A Critical Assessment of Storytelling: Gene Ontology Categories and the Importance of Validating Genomic Scans

Jeffrey David Jensen, Alexandros Stamatakis

In the age of whole-genome population genetics, so-called genomic scan studies often conclude with a long list of putatively selected loci. These lists are then further scrutinized to annotate these regions by gene function, corresponding biological proces ...

Oxford University Press2012

Inference about the number of contributors to a DNA mixture: Comparative analyses of a Bayesian network approach and the maximum allele count method

Kjell Konis

In the forensic examination of DNA mixtures, the question of how to set the total number of contributors (N) presents a topic of ongoing interest. Part of the discussion gravitates around issues of bias, in particular when assessments of the number of cont ...

Elsevier2012

Divergent selection in trailing- versus leading-edge populations of Biscutella laevigata

Stéphane Joost

Background and Aims: Knowledge on how climate-induced range shifts might affect natural selection is crucial to understand the evolution of species range. Methods: Using historical demographic perspectives gathered from regional-scale phylogeography on the ...

Elsevier2010

Physical constraints affecting bacterial habitats and activity in unsaturated porous media – a review

Dani Or

The immense diversity of microbial life found in the vadose zone reflects the extremely heterogeneous and highly dynamic aquatic and chemical environments formed within soil pore spaces. The notion of planktonian free swimming microbes is unrealistic under ...

2007