Victoria E Mullin, Hana N Merchant, Andres N Arce, Will Nash, David G Notton, Ashleigh Whiffin, Vladimir Blagoderov, Gavin R Broad, James Hogan, Tony Hunter, Simon Jackson, Steve Judd, Jeff Ollerton, Selina Brace, Richard J Gill, Ian Barnes
{"title":"Museum specimens reveal the genomic consequences of long-term population decline in an insect pollinator.","authors":"Victoria E Mullin, Hana N Merchant, Andres N Arce, Will Nash, David G Notton, Ashleigh Whiffin, Vladimir Blagoderov, Gavin R Broad, James Hogan, Tony Hunter, Simon Jackson, Steve Judd, Jeff Ollerton, Selina Brace, Richard J Gill, Ian Barnes","doi":"10.1093/molbev/msag223","DOIUrl":"10.1093/molbev/msag223","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Global insect pollinator populations are under threat, with reported declines attributed to increasing habitat loss, pesticide use, and disease. Tracking how genetic diversity has changed over time could reveal the rate and extent of these declines, and the adaptive capacity of affected species-providing an important complement to habitat-based conservation efforts. However, few studies have been able to reconstruct suitable historical baselines to link genomic changes with population change. Here, we use whole genome data from 101 museum specimens of the declining moss carder bumblebee (Bombus muscorum) collected across Britain and Ireland between 1894 and 2019 to reveal a dramatic drop in genetic diversity over the last century. We find a substantial (∼24.6%) reduction in genome-wide heterozygosity across Britain during this period. In England and Wales, where habitat fragmentation is most pronounced, we observe a 2.86-fold increase in runs of homozygosity, commensurate with population fragmentation and isolation. Our results reveal the extent to which human-induced environmental change can lead to severe decadal-scale genomic erosion in a functionally important insect. Identified using DNA from historic museum collections, our approach has widespread applicability for insect conservation and understanding the evolutionary consequences of environmental change.</p>","PeriodicalId":18730,"journal":{"name":"Molecular biology and evolution","volume":"43 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13582021/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148982517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Klara Marie Anker, Rosario Evans Pena, Steven A Kemp, Joseph Clarke, Lele Zhao, David Bonsall, Nicholas Grayson, Matthew Bashton, Ann Sarah Walker, Tanya Golubchik, Matthew Hall, Katrina Lythgoe
{"title":"Identification and masking of artifactual and misleading within-host variants in deep-sequencing SARS-CoV-2 data.","authors":"Klara Marie Anker, Rosario Evans Pena, Steven A Kemp, Joseph Clarke, Lele Zhao, David Bonsall, Nicholas Grayson, Matthew Bashton, Ann Sarah Walker, Tanya Golubchik, Matthew Hall, Katrina Lythgoe","doi":"10.1093/molbev/msag209","DOIUrl":"10.1093/molbev/msag209","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Deep-sequencing data are increasingly used to study within-host viral diversity and to inform evolutionary inference. For SARS-CoV-2, analyses based on intra-host single-nucleotide variants (iSNVs) have been widely applied to quantify within-host diversity and infer transmission dynamics. However, these applications critically depend on the reliable identification of low-frequency variants, which remain vulnerable to systematic and technical artifacts. In this study, we show that recurrent artifactual iSNVs are common in large-scale SARS-CoV-2 sequencing data and can persist even under conservative minor allele frequency thresholds. Using data from the UK's Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Survey, we demonstrate that such artifacts are predominantly sequencing center-specific rather than primer-specific. Each center exhibits a modest, distinct set of recurrent artifactual variants showing little overlap with sites routinely masked at the consensus level. To address this, we developed a systematic, dataset-aware framework that uses recurrence within sequencing datasets to identify small, noise-adapted sets of artifactual iSNVs to mask. Applying this framework reduces spurious sharing of low-frequency variants between samples and qualitatively alters downstream inferences, including estimates of within-host diversity and transmission bottleneck sizes. Although this study focused on SARS-CoV-2, it is likely that recurrent artifactual iSNVs will be problematic for other viruses as mass-sequencing becomes increasingly routine. Together, these findings highlight the importance of explicit, dataset-aware artifact control for robust inference from within-host variation, particularly as genomic studies increasingly seek to exploit sub-consensus diversity in rapidly evolving pathogens.</p>","PeriodicalId":18730,"journal":{"name":"Molecular biology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13533334/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148795470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Haoran Cai, Kerry Geiler-Samerotte, David L Des Marais
{"title":"Consistent and idiosyncratic pleiotropy in shaping genetic correlations.","authors":"Haoran Cai, Kerry Geiler-Samerotte, David L Des Marais","doi":"10.1093/molbev/msag215","DOIUrl":"10.1093/molbev/msag215","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Pleiotropy, the phenomenon where a single mutation influences multiple phenotypic traits, creates genetic correlations that can constrain evolutionary trajectories. Yet genetic correlations differ in their persistence: some remain stable over long evolutionary timescales, whereas others change rapidly across generations or environments. One explanation is that similar values of genetic correlation, rG, can arise from different pleiotropic architectures: broadly aligned effects across many loci, or disproportionate covariance contributions from a few large effect loci. Motivated by the distinction between vertical and horizontal pleiotropy, here, we develop a bivariate marker effect framework for recombinant mapping populations that separates candidate large covariance contributors from the polygenic background correlation, rD. We define rD as the correlation among marker effects after trimming markers with unusually large covariance contributions. rD is a trait-pair summary of how consistently small and moderate effect markers align across the genome; high rD is expected when many perturbations propagate through shared developmental, physiological, causal, or geometric structure. Applying this framework to high-dimensional yeast single-cell morphology, we show that trait pairs with similar rG can differ substantially in rD, and that a small number of candidate outlier regions can strongly influence some marker effect correlations. We then test whether rD predicts the environmental stability of genetic correlations under geldanamycin-mediated Hsp90 perturbation. Trait pairs with stronger rD show smaller absolute changes in rG. These results suggest that genetic correlations supported by a strong polygenic marker effect background are more environmentally stable than correlations shaped primarily by a few large covariance contributors.</p>","PeriodicalId":18730,"journal":{"name":"Molecular biology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13560073/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148795372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sandra Álvarez-Carretero, Ziheng Yang, Philip C J Donoghue, Mario Dos Reis
{"title":"On the origin of animals and placental mammals: a critique of literalist readings of the fossil record.","authors":"Sandra Álvarez-Carretero, Ziheng Yang, Philip C J Donoghue, Mario Dos Reis","doi":"10.1093/molbev/msag211","DOIUrl":"10.1093/molbev/msag211","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The fossil record is incomplete, as evidenced by the pervasive presence of ghost lineages throughout the Tree of Life. For example, across placental mammals, at least 720 Myr of basal lineages are ghost lineages, that is, lineages that have left no fossil evidence of their past history. In contrast, some studies have suggested that the fossil record is a faithful temporal archive of evolutionary history and thus the times of diversification of clades must be close to the ages of their oldest fossils. Such literalist interpretations have been contradicted by analysis of molecular datasets which, in many cases, indicate that groups including placental mammals and animals may have originated at times substantially older than their fossil records. Some of those studies have further argued that, in the case of animals and placental mammals, molecular clocks are uninformative, suffer from characteristic pathologies, and thus cannot distinguish between recent and ancient hypotheses of diversification. Here, we reexamine these two cases and show, using Bayesian model selection theory, that the explosive diversification models previously proposed for animals and placental mammals have a posterior probability of ∼0. We show the characteristic pathologies purportedly discovered do not exist, highlight errors in previous analyses, and provide advice on best practice for molecular-clock dating analysis.</p>","PeriodicalId":18730,"journal":{"name":"Molecular biology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13543917/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148795463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disruption of mitonuclear coadaptation and compensatory evolution after an extreme dietary shift in carnivorous butterflies.","authors":"Runzhao Fang, Xiao Tian, Dan Liang, Peng Zhang","doi":"10.1093/molbev/msag221","DOIUrl":"10.1093/molbev/msag221","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mitochondrial function depends on tight coordination between mitochondrial and nuclear genomes, which requires long-term coevolution to maintain mitonuclear coadaptation. While mitonuclear incompatibility is typically studied in the context of hybridization, other evolutionary scenarios that may disrupt coadaptation between the two genomes remain less explored. Here, we propose that extreme ecological niche shifts may disrupt mitonuclear coadaptation, which we test in carnivorous Miletinae butterflies with an extreme dietary transition. By generating high-quality genome assemblies, we found that Miletinae exhibit extensive chromosomal rearrangements. Comparative phylogenomic analyses revealed a striking asymmetric mitonuclear evolutionary response: Miletinae exhibit elevated mitochondrial nucleotide substitution rates compared to phytophagous relatives, whereas nuclear rates remain stable. This shift reverses the typical lepidopteran pattern where nuclear rates exceed mitochondrial rates. Interestingly, this mitochondrial acceleration is driven primarily by relaxed purifying selection rather than positive selection. To sustain mitochondrial function, the nuclear genome of Miletinae underwent pervasive, multilayered compensatory evolution. We detected strong signatures of positive selection and accelerated evolution in nuclear genes directly interacting with mitochondrial components across oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) complexes, the mitochondrial translation, and replication and transcription machinery. Furthermore, this nuclear compensatory response extends to systems governing mitochondrial homeostasis, including protein quality control and RNA degradation and stabilization. Our results support a model in which extreme ecological transitions can disrupt ancestral mitonuclear coadaptation and promote the emergence of a new coadapted state through systemic nuclear compensation. This study broadens the conceptual framework of mitonuclear coevolution and highlights its role in facilitating evolutionary persistence after major ecological shifts.</p>","PeriodicalId":18730,"journal":{"name":"Molecular biology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13560083/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148830465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Evolution of virulence of a plant RNA virus in developmental stage-structured host populations.","authors":"José L Carrasco, Christina Toft, Santiago F Elena","doi":"10.1093/molbev/msag225","DOIUrl":"10.1093/molbev/msag225","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Natural host populations are age-structured, and developmental stages differ in susceptibility and within-host pathogen dynamics, potentially imposing distinct selective pressures on viruses. However, the evolutionary consequences of host age structure remain poorly understood. We experimentally evolved turnip mosaic potyvirus for 5 passages in Arabidopsis thaliana populations spanning 7 demographic regimes, from juvenile- to mature-dominated cohorts. We quantified disease progression, symptom severity, and viral load, cross-inoculated evolved lineages across host stages to construct infection matrices, and performed whole-population sequencing at passages 1 and 5. Disease traits changed markedly with passage, demography, and their interaction. Disease progression evolved faster in older populations, whereas symptom severity was independent of median age, indicating demographic reweighting of virulence components. Viral load increased across passages and positively correlated with severity, linking within-host fitness to symptoms. Cross-inoculation assays revealed a modular infection network: juvenile-evolved lineages specialized on juvenile hosts, whereas lineages from intermediate and older populations were more generalist. Genomically, we detected both parallel and demography-specific adaptations, including recurrent changes in the viral protein VPg (involved in translation, replication, and host interactions) as well as synonymous variants showing consistent or opposing selection across host population stage structures. Overall, host age structure emerges as a major ecological driver of virulence evolution, shaping tradeoffs between disease progression and severity and determining specialization versus generalism. These results integrate phenotypic and genomic responses and suggest that manipulating crop age structure could steer virus evolution toward less damaging outcomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":18730,"journal":{"name":"Molecular biology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13560089/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148865694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cade Mirchandani, Abdelmajid Omarjee, Guillaume Achaz, Erik D Enbody, Gregg W C Thomas, Timothy B Sackton
{"title":"Variant calling in nonmodel organisms with snpArcher.","authors":"Cade Mirchandani, Abdelmajid Omarjee, Guillaume Achaz, Erik D Enbody, Gregg W C Thomas, Timothy B Sackton","doi":"10.1093/molbev/msag220","DOIUrl":"10.1093/molbev/msag220","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Population genomic studies in nonmodel organisms increasingly depend on whole-genome resequencing, yet translating raw reads into reliable variant callsets remains a practical challenge due to the complexity of multistep bioinformatics pipelines and the absence of species-specific best practices. Here, we present a step-by-step protocol for snpArcher, a Snakemake-based workflow that takes raw sequencing reads and a reference genome as input and produces a filtered, joint-called Variant Call Format (VCF) file suitable for downstream population genomic analysis. We guide users through six phases: installation and environment setup, sample sheet creation, run configuration, execution on local or high-performance computing systems, quality control review using an interactive HTML dashboard, and downstream analysis, focusing on postprocessing and filtering. The quality control (QC) dashboard aggregates individual-level metrics including principal component analysis, relatedness estimation, depth-missingness diagnostics, and admixture analysis to help identify batch effects, contamination, cryptic relatedness, and outlier samples before downstream analysis. We demonstrate the impact of sequential filtering steps on the site frequency spectrum and demographic inference using a dataset of 137 burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia) genomes, showing how removal of low-coverage individuals, sex-linked scaffolds, and regions of excess heterozygosity eliminates artifacts that would otherwise bias inference of population size history. This protocol is intended as a practical companion to the original snpArcher publication, enabling researchers working with nonmodel organisms to produce and evaluate analysis-ready variant callsets in a reproducible manner.</p>","PeriodicalId":18730,"journal":{"name":"Molecular biology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13590228/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148830519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ethan M Laumer, Sophie M Neu, Benjamin C Klementz, Pranil Panda, Emily V W Setton, Prashant P Sharma
{"title":"Pax6 homologs are required for patterning both visual systems of the daddy-longlegs Phalangium opilio.","authors":"Ethan M Laumer, Sophie M Neu, Benjamin C Klementz, Pranil Panda, Emily V W Setton, Prashant P Sharma","doi":"10.1093/molbev/msag226","DOIUrl":"10.1093/molbev/msag226","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The evolution of visual systems has compelled numerous investigations of developmental processes underlying eye patterning across Bilateria. It is well-established that homologs of the transcription factor Pax6 play a highly conserved role in eye fate specification and are at the top of the retinal determination gene network (RDGN) hierarchy. Curiously, Pax6 homologs do not appear to maintain this function in well-studied chelicerate models. It was recently proposed that the gene Pax2 (shaven; sv) may have subsumed the role of Pax6 in eye fate specification in chelicerates. However, no functional data are available for any chelicerate Pax homologs. We examined the incidence of Pax family genes across chelicerate phylogeny, and interrogated the expression and function of Pax2 and Pax6 homologs in the daddy-longlegs Phalangium opilio, which bears a highly plesiomorphic arrangement of visual systems. We show that the Pax6 homologs eyeless (ey) and twin of eyeless (toy) are expressed early in the developing head lobes of P. opilio, whereas sv is not. Gene silencing of ey, toy, and sv individually had no discernible effect on eye development. By contrast, double knockdown of ey and toy resulted in defects or loss in all three eye pairs of P. opilio. These data are consistent with a conserved role for Pax6 homologs in patterning both median and lateral visual systems across arthropods. Our results suggest that heterochronic shifts in expression, rather than changes in function, underlie the atypical dynamics of Pax genes in derived arachnid groups such as spiders.</p>","PeriodicalId":18730,"journal":{"name":"Molecular biology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13591056/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148865667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Local ancestry inference identifies robust evidence of selection in Neolithic Europe.","authors":"Georgia Mies, Iain Mathieson","doi":"10.1093/molbev/msag236","DOIUrl":"10.1093/molbev/msag236","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>During the European Neolithic, migrating Anatolian farmers admixed with local hunter-gatherers, coinciding with major shifts in diet, environment, and lifestyle that imposed strong selective pressures. Local ancestry inference is widely used to detect selection following admixture, but most methods were developed and validated on present-day populations. Their performance in ancient DNA-where reference panels are smaller, data are sparser, and admixture is more ancient-remains unresolved. We benchmarked eight local ancestry inference methods on 176 imputed Neolithic genomes. While individual-level ancestry estimates are highly correlated across methods, inferred tract lengths and admixture time estimates vary by an order of magnitude. Overall, we recommend Gnomix or RFMix for general use. We also investigated our ability to detect natural selection using LAI. Integrating results across methods and replicating in two independent datasets (n = 378 and 1,121), we identified a robust ancestry deviation at FADS1/2, consistent with adaptation in metabolism. We also identified IRAK4 (innate immunity) as a candidate locus, but with less consistent signals across methods. Finally, we replicate previous reports of excess hunter-gatherer ancestry at the HLA, but these results are inconsistent across methods and suggest that they may be affected by bias in local ancestry inference. Our findings demonstrate that while local ancestry inference recovers biologically meaningful signals in ancient genomes, results can be sensitive to the methods used for inference, particularly in complex regions like the HLA. Method choice critically influences inferred ancestry patterns and selection signals, underscoring the importance of multimethod validation.</p>","PeriodicalId":18730,"journal":{"name":"Molecular biology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13614254/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148983186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Zoë L Müller, Joshua Orlando Rivera, Kathleen Currie, Hairo Isaac Rios Carlos, Sean M Rovito, Corey Roelke, Matthew Fujita
{"title":"Mutation accumulation in a hybrid parthenogenetic vertebrate.","authors":"Zoë L Müller, Joshua Orlando Rivera, Kathleen Currie, Hairo Isaac Rios Carlos, Sean M Rovito, Corey Roelke, Matthew Fujita","doi":"10.1093/molbev/msag214","DOIUrl":"10.1093/molbev/msag214","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Asexual lineages are thought to experience elevated extinction rates compared with sexual species, yet direct evidence for the underlying genetic causes remains scarce. Muller's ratchet predicts that the absence of recombination in asexual organisms facilitates the accumulation of deleterious mutations, thereby reducing long-term fitness. Here, we test this hypothesis in the hybrid-origin, parthenogenetic whiptail lizard Aspidoscelis tesselatus by integrating short-read RNAseq and long-read IsoSeq data from both the asexual lineage and its parental sexual species. We reconstructed phased transcripts for A. tesselatus to quantify mutation accumulation relative to the parental sexual species. Comparative analyses revealed elevated ω ratios in both parental genomic complements (subgenomes) of the parthenogenetic lineage, consistent with accelerated accumulation of nonsynonymous mutations. Structural variant analyses identified multiple indels in expressed transcripts predicted to disrupt protein domains. Functional annotation indicated that genes affected by both single-nucleotide variants and indels were enriched for roles in chromatin organization, apoptosis regulation, and transcriptional control. While both parental subgenomes showed similar evolutionary patterns, the maternal complement exhibited more structural and missense mutations than the paternal complement. Together, these results provide evidence that mutations accumulate in asexual A. tesselatus in genes involved in core cellular functions, supporting theoretical predictions that Muller's ratchet contributes to mutation accumulation in asexual lineages.</p>","PeriodicalId":18730,"journal":{"name":"Molecular biology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13555296/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148887273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}