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Genetic variation describes the genotypic and phenotypic differences between individuals in a population, and between populations. This variation arises through genetic mutation and is important as it provides the diversity within and between populations required for natural selection.
Species with low genetic diversity have limited capacity to adapt to environmental change. This study finds that the skin microbiome and non-genetic (epigenetic) modifications of the DNA represent additional sources of variation that could help low diversity fish survive environmental challenges.
Reference assemblies of great ape sex chromosomes show that Y chromosomes are more variable in size and sequence than X chromosomes and provide a resource for studies on human evolution and conservation genetics of non-human apes.
Genetic variation present in wild rice is a reservoir of useful genes for rice breeding. Here, the authors report the haplotype-resolved gapless genome assembly of wild rice, the development of two sets of chromosome segment substitution lines, and the cloning of a blast resistance gene originated from wild rice.
Genome-wide analyses reveal a deep history of musical instruments and specialized vocabulary among Central African hunter-gatherers and the long-term cultural interconnectivity of these groups before and after the Bantu expansion.
Logsdon et al. report the second complete sequence of all centromeres from a single human genome, enabling comparative analyses of the variation in tandemly repeating α-satellite DNA.
In this Comment, Lamkin and Gymrek discuss recent results that suggest that the systematic incorporation of tandem repeats into complex trait analyses will yield a rich source of causal variants and new biological insights.
Reflecting on the importance of short tandem repeats (STRs) in population genetics, Ning Xie highlights a 2023 publication that characterized genome-wide STR variation in global human genomes to expand our understanding of STR genetic diversity within and across populations.
A publication in Nature reports the data release of around 245,000 clinical-grade whole-genome sequences as part of the NIH’s All of Us Research Programme. Several companion papers highlight the value of better capturing global genomic diversity.
In this Journal Club, Yoav Ram recalls how he reconciled results from his own research with the reduction principle through the help of a paper published in PNAS by Altenberg et al.