Natural Selections is a reading group for discussing recent and fundamental research papers pertaining to evolutionary genetics.
Time: Every other Wednesday, 1-2PM. See the Google Sheet for an up-to-date schedule of meeting times.
Location: Genetics-Biotechnology room 5406.
Contact: To join the mailing list go to natural-selections@g-groups.wisc.edu. Reach out to Alex Kwakye and Nick Collier with any questions.
Structure: The group alternates between ‘breadth’ meetings, where up to 6 attendees share short overviews of thematic papers, and ‘depth’ meetings, where one publication selected by vote from the papers presented at the last meeting is discussed in greater detail. Participants are welcome to attend breadth meetings without sharing a paper. A broad range of papers are potentially appropriate for this reading group, but (a) please review the paper yourself first to ensure it is a good choice, and (b) consider choosing papers with a good level of detail, i.e., not just from Nature/Science.
Sign-up: Please use the Google Sheet to sign up to share.
Former Readings:
PDF files of these papers can be found on Box.
Fall 2024:
Oct. 29. Shah, P., McCandlish, D. M., & Plotkin, J. B. (2015). Contingency and entrenchment in protein evolution under purifying selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(25), E3226-E3235.
Oct. 1. Huck, M., Di Fiore, A., & Fernandez-Duque, E. (2020). Of apples and oranges? The evolution of “monogamy” in non-human primates. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 7, 472.
Sept. 17. O’Brien, N. L., Holland, B., Engelstädter, J., & Ortiz-Barrientos, D. (2024). The distribution of fitness effects during adaptive walks using a simple genetic network. PLoS genetics, 20(5), e1011289.
Fall 2023:
Natural Selections is meeting weekly in Fall 2023, Thursdays at 2 pm in 158 Birge Hall.
Oct. 2. Buffalo & Kern (2023). A quantitative genetic model of background selection in humans. BioRxiv: doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.07.556762.
Sept. 25. Santiago & Caballero (2016). Joint prediction of the effective population size and the rate of fixation of deleterious mutations. Genetics, 204: 1267-1279.
Sept. 12. Hudson & Kaplan (1995). Deleterious background selection with recombination. Genetics, 141: 1605-1617.
Spring 2023:
Apr. 27. Linquist (2022) Causal-role myopia and the functional investigation of junk DNA. Biology & Philosophy 37:28.
Apr. 13. Moutinho et al. (2022) Strong evidence for the adaptive walk model of gene evolution in Drosophila and Arabidopsis. Plos Biol. 20: e3001775.
Mar. 30. Wang et. al (2022) De novo Mutations in Domestic Cat are Consistent with an Effect of Reproductive Longevity on Both the Rate and Spectrum of Mutations. Mol. Bol. Evol. 39:msac147.
Mar. 2. Murphy et al. (2022) Broad-scale variation in human genetic diversity levels is predicted by purifying selection on coding and non-coding elements. Preprint.
Feb. 16. Svensson (2022) Multivariate selection and the making and breaking of mutational pleiotropy. Evolutionary Ecology 36:807-828.
Feb. 2. Patton et al. (2022) Hybridization alters the shape of the genotypic fitness landscape, increasing access to novel fitness peaks during adaptive radiation. eLife 11:e72905.
Fall 2022:
Nov. 21. Tepolt et al. (2021) Balanced polymorphism fuels rapid selection in an invasive crab despite high gene flow and low genetic diversity. Mol. Ecol. 31:55-69.
Nov. 7. Sohail et al. (2022) Inferring epistasis from genetic time-series data. Mol. Biol. Evol. 39:msac199.
Oct. 24. Carrión et al. (2022) The terroir of the finch: How spatial and temporal variation shapes phenotypic traits in Darwin’s finches. Ecology and Evolution 12:e9399.
Oct. 10. de Manuel M, Wu FL, Przeworski M. (2022) A paternal bias in germline mutation is widespread in amniotes and can arise independently of cell division numbers. eLife 11:e80008.
Sept. 26. Böndel KB, Samuels T, Craig RJ, Ness RW, Colegrave N and Keightley PD (2022) The distribution of fitness effects of spontaneous mutations in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii inferred using frequency changes under experimental evolution. Plos Genet. 18:e1009840.
Spring 2022:
May 5. Leinonen T, McCairns RJS, O’Hara R and Merilä J. (2013) QST-FST comparisons: evolutionary and ecological insights from genomic heterogeneity. Nat. Rev. Genet. 14:179-190.
Apr. 21. Liu H and Zhang J (2021) The rate and molecular spectrum of mutation are selectively maintained in yeast. Nat. Comm. 12:4044.
Apr. 7. Orr HA (1998) Genetics of adaptation: The distribution of factors fixed during adaptive evolution. Evolution 52:935-949. See also: Connallon T and Hodgins KA (2021) Allen Orr and the genetics of adaptation. Evolution 75:2624-2640.
Mar. 24. Tennessen JA (2018) Gene buddies: linked balanced polymorphisms reinforce each other even in the absence of epistasis. PeerJ doi:10.7717/peerj.5110.
Mar 10. Naser-Khdour S, Minh BQ, and Lanfear R (2021) Assessing confidence in root placement on phylogenies: An empirical study using nonreversible models for mammals. Syst. Biol. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syab067.
Feb. 24. Cano AV, Rozhoňová H, Stoltxfus A, McCandlish DM, and Payne JL (2022) Mutation bias shapes the spectrum of adaptive substitutions. PNAS 119:e2119720119.
Feb. 10. Booker TR, Yeaman S, and Whitlock MC. (2020) Global adaptation complicates the interpretation of genome scans for local adaptation. Evol. Lett. 5:4-15.
Fall 2021:
Dec. 13. Wilson AJ, Pemberton JM, Pilkington JG, Coltman DW, Mifsud DV, Clutton-Brock TH, and Kruuk LEB (2006) Environmental coupling of selection and heritability limits evolution. Plos Biol. 4(7): e216.
Nov. 29. Kinsler G, Geiler-Samerotte K and Petrov DA (2020) Fitness variation across subtle environmental perturbations reveals local modularity and global pleiotropy of adaptation. eLife 9:e61271.
Nov. 15. Barghi N and Schlotterer C (2020) Distinct patterns of selective sweep and polygenic adaptation in evolve and resequence studies. Genome Bio. Evol. 12:890-904.
Nov. 1. Reddy G and Desai MM (2021) Global epistasis emerges from a generic model of a complex trait. eLife 10:e64740.
Oct. 18. Ågren JA (2021) Sewall Wright’s criticism of the gene’s-eye view of evolution. Evolution 75:2326-2334.
Oct. 4. Buffalo V (2021) Quantifying the relationship between genetic diversity and population size suggests natural selection cannot explain Lewontin’s Paradox. eLife;10:e67509.