Evolutionary Biology

Researchers at the Earlham Institute have identified a previously unknown protist species that reassigns two genetic stop codons to code for amino acids instead, marking a rare departure from the standard rules of life.

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Researchers have discovered that distantly related butterflies and moths have used the same two genes, ivory and optix, for more than 120 million years to create similar warning colors on their wings. This finding suggests evolution can follow predictable genetic pathways rather than being entirely random. The study focused on species from South American rainforests.

Researchers at MIT have found evidence that some early life forms began using oxygen hundreds of millions of years before it accumulated in Earth's atmosphere. The study traces a key oxygen-processing enzyme to the Mesoarchean era, suggesting microbes consumed oxygen produced by cyanobacteria. This discovery challenges previous understandings of aerobic respiration's timeline.

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A team of researchers from Japan, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Germany has suggested that life on Earth may have begun in sticky, gel-like materials attached to rocks, rather than inside cells. This 'prebiotic gel-first' hypothesis posits that these primitive gels, similar to modern microbial biofilms, provided a protected environment for early chemical reactions to evolve into complex systems. The idea, published in ChemSystemsChem, also has implications for searching for life on other planets.