Unveiling Nature's Patterns

The new review focuses on repeated adaptation, a phenomenon of different lineages or species adapting to similar environmental challenges and explores to which extent and why these species reuse the same genes during adaptations.

The review highlights the role of relatedness (or divergence time) between species in determining the extent of gene reuse during repeated adaptation. The authors show that as species diverge over time, gene reuse tends to decrease. This is likely due to a variety of evolutionary mechanisms: a decrease in the probability of sharing the same alleles, functional differentiation among genes, and genome diversification. Overall, the new study contributes to a better understanding of the conditions under which evolution can repeat itself at the genetic level.

The review Divergence time shapes gene reuse during repeated adaptation can be accessed here