John Gurdon is at the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Institute of Cancer and Developmental Biology in Cambridge. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he changed from classics to zoology. Dur...

Chromosomal inversions are ubiquitous across the Tree of Life, with genome-wide studies revealing a bias toward smaller inversions, yet research has disproportionately focused on large, supergene-like inversions linked to discrete phenotypes. This limits our understanding of inversions' roles in trait evolution, as their size affects their potential functional impact. Investigation of smaller inversions and multi-inversion genotypes is crucial to elucidate their role in shaping continuous traits and evolutionary adaptation. Addressing this requires a shift towards a systematic study of smaller inversions and the use of experimental assays and functional annotation to identify the evolutionary forces driving different genomic trait architectures.

The genome of the Atlas blue butterfly contains ten times more chromosomes than most butterflies, and more than any other known diploid animal. Wright et al. show that this extraordinary karyotype is ...

Symbiosis is a fundamental characteristic of eukaryotic biology. Arthropods, including insects, often harbor maternally inherited endosymbiotic microb…

Extrachromosomal circular DNA (ecDNA) is rapidly emerging as a groundbreaking frontier in biomedical science and is now recognized as a key player in nearly 30% of cancer patients, where it drives onc...