Life’s story may stretch further back than scientists once thought. Some genes found in nearly every organism today were already duplicated before all life shared a common ancestor. By tracking these ...

Every organism alive on Earth, from oak trees to octopuses to the bacteria in our gut, belongs to a single extended family. Genetic evidence points back to one ancestral cell, a last common forebear ...

De novo gene evolution describes the process by which entirely new genes originate from previously non-coding DNA rather than from the duplication and divergence of existing genetic material. This ...

Scientists have uncovered an unexpected genetic shift that may explain how animals with backbones first emerged and became so diverse.

Like other living creatures, humans have been shaped by evolution. Over time, we have developed – and continue to develop – ...

Learn how increased protein diversity in signaling genes may have helped drive the shift from invertebrates to vertebrates, ...

From epic poetry to game shows, from Stone Age axes to spaceflight, humans have the most complex cultures of any species on Earth. Since the time of Darwin, scientists have suspected that this culture ...

New research from the University of St Andrews has discovered a crucial piece in the puzzle of how all animals with a spine—including all mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians—evolved. In a paper ...

Findings suggest that new genes can form by repurposing fragments of ancestral genes while incorporating entirely new coding regions (the protein-coding parts of the DNA). This innovative concept ...

A duplicated gene evolved into a switch that determines sex in frogs, revealing how evolution can safely reshape critical ...

Microbes evolve predominantly by acquiring genes from other microbes, new research suggests, challenging previous theories that gene duplication is the primary driver of protein evolution in ...