In higher plants, invertases hydrolyze sucrose (Suc), the major end product of
photosynthesis, into glucose (Glc) and fructose (Fru), which are used as nutrients, energy …

Although the assumption of the neutral theory of molecular evolution—that some classes of
mutation have too small an effect on fitness to be affected by natural selection—seems …

Strikingly consistent correlations between rates of coding-sequence evolution and gene
expression levels are apparent across taxa, but the biological causes behind the selective …

Why do proteins evolve at different rates? Advances in systems biology and genomics have
facilitated a move from studying individual proteins to characterizing global cellular factors …

The Poaceae family, also known as the grasses, includes agronomically important cereal
crops such as rice, maize, sorghum, and wheat. Previous comparative studies have shown …

A gene's rate of sequence evolution is among the most fundamental evolutionary quantities
in common use, but what determines evolutionary rates has remained unclear. Here, we …

Plants are exposed to continual changes in the environment. The daily alternation between
light and darkness results in massive recurring changes in the carbon budget, and leads to …

DNA methylation of coding regions, known as gene body methylation, is conserved across
eukaryotic lineages. The function of body methylation is not known, but it may either prevent …

Background Synonymous codon usage bias (SCUB) is an inevitable phenomenon in
organismic taxa, generally referring to differences in the occurrence frequency of codons …

Ploidy-variable species allow direct inference of the effects of chromosome copy number on
fundamental evolutionary processes. While an abundance of theoretical work suggests …