Herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2 (HSV-1 and HSV-2) are seen as close relatives but also unambiguously considered as evolutionary independent units. Here, we sequenced the genomes of 18 HSV-2 isolates characterized by divergent UL30 gene sequences to further elucidate the evolutionary history of this virus. Surprisingly, genome-wide recombination analyses showed that all HSV-2 genomes sequenced to date contain HSV-1 fragments. Using phylogenomic analyses, we could also show that two main HSV-2 lineages exist. One lineage is mostly restricted to subSaharan Africa whereas the other has reached a global distribution. Interestingly, only the worldwide lineage is characterized by ancient recombination events with HSV-1. Our findings highlight the complexity of HSV-2 evolution, a virus of putative zoonotic origin which later recombined with its human-adapted relative. They also suggest that coinfections with HSV-1 and 2 may have genomic and potentially functional consequences and should therefore be monitored more closely.

Arachnida is an ancient, diverse and ecologically important animal group that contains a number of species of interest for medical, agricultural and engineering applications. Despite their importance, many aspects of the arachnid tree of life remain unresolved, hindering comparative approaches to arachnid biology. Biologists have made considerable efforts to resolve the arachnid phylogeny; yet, limited and challenging morphological characters, as well as a dearth of genetic resources, have hindered progress. Here, we present a genomic toolkit for arachnids featuring hundreds of conserved DNA regions (ultraconserved elements or UCEs) that allow targeted sequencing of any species in the arachnid tree of life. We used recently developed capture probes designed from conserved regions of available arachnid genomes to enrich a sample of loci from 32 diverse arachnids. Sequence capture returned an average of 487 UCE loci for all species, with a range from 170 to 722. Phylogenetic analysis of these UCEs produced a highly resolved arachnid tree with relationships largely consistent with recent transcriptome-based phylogenies. We also tested the phylogenetic informativeness of UCE probes within the spider, scorpion and harvestman orders, demonstrating the utility of these markers at shallower taxonomic scales and suggesting that these loci will be useful for species-level differences. This probe set will open the door to phylogenomic and population genomic studies across the arachnid tree of life, enabling systematics, species delimitation, species discovery and conservation of these diverse arthropods.

Mitochondrial uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) is essential for nonshivering thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue and is widely accepted to have played a key thermoregulatory role in small-bodied and neonatal placental mammals that enabled the exploitation of cold environments. We map ucp1 sequences from 133 mammals onto a species tree constructed from a ~51-kb sequence alignment and show that inactivating mutations have occurred in at least 8 of the 18 traditional placental orders, thereby challenging the physiological importance of UCP1 across Placentalia. Selection and timetree analyses further reveal that ucp1 inactivations temporally correspond with strong secondary reductions in metabolic intensity in xenarthrans and pangolins, or in six other lineages coincided with a ~30 million–year episode of global cooling in the Paleogene that promoted sharp increases in body mass and cladogenesis evident in the fossil record. Our findings also demonstrate that members of various lineages (for example, cetaceans, horses, woolly mammoths, Steller’s sea cows) evolved extreme cold hardiness in the absence of UCP1-mediated thermogenesis. Finally, we identify ucp1 inactivation as a historical contingency that is linked to the current low species diversity of clades lacking functional UCP1, thus providing the first evidence for species selection related to the presence or absence of a single gene product. Inactivation of uncoupling protein 1 is linked to shifts in metabolic rate, body size, and species richness of eight mammalian lineages. Inactivation of uncoupling protein 1 is linked to shifts in metabolic rate, body size, and species richness of eight mammalian lineages.

Ants in the Neotropical genus Sericomyrmex Mayr cultivate fungi for food. Both ants and fungi are obligate, coevolved symbionts. The taxonomy of Sericomyrmex is problematic because the morphology of the worker caste is generally homogeneous across all of the species within the genus, species limits are vague, and the relationships between them are unknown. We used ultraconserved elements (UCEs) as genome-scale markers to reconstruct evolutionary history and to infer species boundaries in Sericomyrmex. We recovered an average of ∼990 UCE loci for 88 Sericomyrmex samples from across the geographical range of the genus as well as for five outgroup taxa. Using maximum likelihood and species-tree approaches, we recovered nearly identical topologies across datasets with 50–95% matrix completeness. We identify nine species-level lineages in Sericomyrmex, including two new species. This is less than the previously described 19 species, even accounting for two species for which we had no UCE samples, which brings the total number of Sericomyrmex species to 11. Divergence-dating analyses recovered 4.3 Ma as the crown-group age estimates for Sericomyrmex, indicating a recent, rapid radiation. We also sequenced mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) for 125 specimens. Resolution and support for clades in our COI phylogeny are weak, indicating that COI is not an appropriate species-delimitation tool. However, taxa within species consistently cluster together, suggesting that COI is useful as a species identification (‘DNA barcoding’) tool. We also sequenced internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and large subunit (LSU) for 32 Sericomyrmex fungal cultivars. The fungal phylogeny confirms that Sericomyrmex fungi are generalized higher-attine cultivars, interspersed with Trachymyrmex-associated fungal species, indicating cultivar sharing and horizontal transfer between these two genera. Our results indicate that UCEs offer immense potential for delimiting and resolving relationships of problematic, recently diverged species.

Although considerable progress has been made in understanding the genetic basis of morphologic traits (for example, body size and coat color) in dogs and wolves, the genetic basis of their behavioral divergence is poorly understood. An integrative approach using both behavioral and genetic data is required to understand the molecular underpinnings of the various behavioral characteristics associated with domestication. We analyze a 5-Mb genomic region on chromosome 6 previously found to be under positive selection in domestic dog breeds. Deletion of this region in humans is linked to Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS), a multisystem congenital disorder characterized by hypersocial behavior. We associate quantitative data on behavioral phenotypes symptomatic of WBS in humans with structural changes in the WBS locus in dogs. We find that hypersociability, a central feature of WBS, is also a core element of domestication that distinguishes dogs from wolves. We provide evidence that structural variants in GTF2I and GTF2IRD1, genes previously implicated in the behavioral phenotype of patients with WBS and contained within the WBS locus, contribute to extreme sociability in dogs. This finding suggests that there are commonalities in the genetic architecture of WBS and canine tameness and that directional selection may have targeted a unique set of linked behavioral genes of large phenotypic effect, allowing for rapid behavioral divergence of dogs and wolves, facilitating coexistence with humans. We hypothesize that selection during dog domestication targeted CNVs associated with hypersociability. We hypothesize that selection during dog domestication targeted CNVs associated with hypersociability.

The bottom-up construction of cell-sized compartments programmed with DNA that are capable of sensing the chemical and physical environment remains challenging in synthetic cell engineering. Here, we construct mechanosensitive liposomes with biosensing capability by expressing the E. coli channel MscL and a calcium biosensor using cell-free expression.

Flower size varies dramatically across angiosperms, representing innovations over the course of >130 million years of evolution and contributing substantially to relationships with pollinators. However, the genetic underpinning of flower size is not well understood. Saltugilia (Polemoniaceae) provides an excellent non-model system for extending the genetic study of flower size to interspecific differences that coincide with variation in pollinators.

Species delimitation has been divided by two approaches: DNA barcoding that focuses on standardization of the genetic marker and multilocus methods that place a premium on genomic coverage and conceptual rigor in modeling the divergence process. Most multilocus methods fail as barcodes, however, because few assay the same marker set and are therefore not readily comparable across studies and databases. We introduce ultraconserved elements (UCEs) as potential genomic barcodes that allow rigorous species delimitation and a bridge to DNA barcoding database to allow both rigorous species delimitation and standardized identification of delimited taxa. UCEs query thousands of loci across the nuclear genome in way that is replicable across broad taxonomic groups (i.e., vertebrates). We apply UCEs to species delimitation in a species complex of frogs found in the Mexican Highlands. Sarcohyla contains 24 described species, many of which are critically endangered and known only from their type localities. Evidence suggests that one broadly distributed member of the genus, S. bistincta, might contain multiple species. We generated data from 1,891 UCEs, which contained 1,742 informative SNPs for S. bistincta and closely related species. We also captured mitochondrial genomes for most samples as off-target bycatch of the UCE enrichment process. Phylogenies from UCEs and mtDNA agreed in many ways, but differed in that mtDNA suggested a more complex evolutionary history perhaps influenced by reticulate processes. The species delimitation method we used identified eight putative species (which we call lineages pending further study) within S. bistincta. Being able to compare linked mtDNA data to existing sequences on Genbank allowed us to identify one of these lineages nested within S. bistincta as an already-described species, S. pentheter. Another lineage nested within S. bistincta is currently being described as a new species (referred to here as sp. nov.). The remaining six lineages fell into two non-sister clades, one containing the core S. bistincta mostly in Oaxaca and Guerrero, and another in the Transvolcanic Belt. The latter clade, at 10% divergence in mtDNA and paraphyletic with respect to other S. bistincta, is a clear candidate for species status. Our study demonstrates not only that UCEs can be used as effective genomic DNA barcodes, but that combining multilocus genomic data with mtDNA is a powerful approach for both delimiting species and identifying them in poorly described and phenotypically challenging groups.