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And they could help some creatures adjust to changing climates Originally published by Sofia Quaglia, at nautil.us, on July 30, 202 Cell biologist Amy Gladfelter recently set out to solve a riddle that concerns one of the most fundamental features of evolution : adaptation . After a decade of study, she had noticed that one of her favorite fungi, Ashbya gossypii , thrives in a wide variety of environments , from the tropics of Trinidad to the often frigid plains of Wisconsin . How , she began to wonder, did the simple filamentous fungus , with its tiny genome and simple lifecycle, evolve such versatility —and how did the beach-town strains differ from the cold-adapted ones ? Gladfelter decided to tinker with Ashbya gossypii ’s genetic code to see what she could find out. In her laboratory at Duke University School of Medicine , she and her team sifted through 70 strains of the fungus and started methodically swapping proteins in its DNA . In particular, they focused on a protein ...

Originally published by Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, on November 24, 2023 Evolution of novel traits in Nepenthes. a, N. gracilis plant with carnivorous pitcher leaves. b, The phylogenetic position of Nepenthes. Divergence time with a 95% CI is shown for the ML tree topology reconstructed using 1,614 single-copy protein sequences from 20 species. Bootstrap supports and posterior probability values for the position of Nepenthes are shown as follows: nucleotide ML/protein ML/nucleotide CO/protein CO. Character evolution was parsimoniously mapped to branches, while symbols do not indicate point estimates of evolutionary origin times. Note that carnivory was secondarily lost in Ancistrocladus . Caricatures of leaves of plants belonging to carnivorous clades are shown to the right. CI, confidence interval; T., Triassic; Ju., Jurassic; Cr., Cretaceous; Pa., Paleogene; N., Neogene; Q., Quaternary. Credit: Nature Plants (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41477-023-01562-2 In a recent study, ...