Plant evolution has been characterised by a series of major novelties in their vegetative and
reproductive traits that have led to greater complexity. Underpinning this diversification has …

Understanding the origin of eukaryotic cells is one of the most difficult problems in all of
biology. A key challenge relevant to the question of eukaryogenesis is reconstructing the …

Complex multicellularity has emerged independently across a few eukaryotic lineages and
is often associated with the rise of elaborate, tightly coordinated developmental processes …

Spliceosomal introns are gene segments removed from RNA transcripts by
ribonucleoprotein machineries called spliceosomes. In some eukaryotes a second …

Motivation The detection of homology through sequence comparison is a typical first step in
the study of protein function and evolution. In this work, we explore the applicability of …

Pelagic larval stages are widespread across animals, yet it is unclear whether larvae were
present in the last common ancestor of animals or whether they evolved multiple times due …

The root systems of most plant species are aided by the soil-foraging capacities of symbiotic
arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi of the Glomeromycotina subphylum. Despite recent …

The discovery of de novo emerged genes, originating from previously noncoding DNA
regions, challenges traditional views of species evolution. Indeed, the hypothesis of …

Species within nearly all extant animal lineages are capable of regenerating body parts.
However, it remains unclear whether the gene expression programme controlling …

Land plants (embryophytes) came about in a momentous evolutionary singularity: plant
terrestrialization. This event marks not only the conquest of land by plants but also the …