Emerging Frontiers in the Study of Molecular Evolution

David A Liberles; Belinda Chang; Kerry Geiler-Samerotte; Aaron Goldman; Jody Hey; Betül Kaçar; Michelle Meyer; William Murphy; David Posada; Andrew Storfer

doi:10.1007/s00239-020-09932-6

Emerging Frontiers in the Study of Molecular Evolution

J Mol Evol. 2020 Apr;88(3):211-226. doi: 10.1007/s00239-020-09932-6.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biology and Center for Computational Genetics and Genomics, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA. daliberles@temple.edu.
² Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, 25 Harbord Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G5, Canada.
³ Center for Mechanisms of Evolution, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA.
⁴ Department of Biology, Oberlin College and Conservatory, K123 Science Center, 119 Woodland Street, Oberlin, OH, 44074, USA.
⁵ Department of Biology and Center for Computational Genetics and Genomics, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA.
⁶ Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA.
⁷ Department of Biology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467, USA.
⁸ Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA.
⁹ Biomedical Research Center (CINBIO), University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain.
¹⁰ School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA.

Abstract

A collection of the editors of Journal of Molecular Evolution have gotten together to pose a set of key challenges and future directions for the field of molecular evolution. Topics include challenges and new directions in prebiotic chemistry and the RNA world, reconstruction of early cellular genomes and proteins, macromolecular and functional evolution, evolutionary cell biology, genome evolution, molecular evolutionary ecology, viral phylodynamics, theoretical population genomics, somatic cell molecular evolution, and directed evolution. While our effort is not meant to be exhaustive, it reflects research questions and problems in the field of molecular evolution that are exciting to our editors.

Keywords: Comparative genomics; Directed evolution; Evolutionary cell biology; Molecular evolutionary ecology; Prebiotic evolution; Somatic evolution.

Publication types

Editorial

MeSH terms

Ecology
Evolution, Molecular*
Genetics, Population
Genome
Origin of Life*
Periodicals as Topic
Proteins / genetics
RNA / genetics*
Selection, Genetic

Substances

Proteins
RNA

Grants and funding

R01 GM126563/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/United States