Phylogenetics articles from across Nature Portfolio

By studying the closest extant unicellular relatives of animals and fungi, a study in Nature contrasts the evolutionary trajectories leading to the origin of these groups.

Multi-drug resistant Mycobacterium abscessus clones from individuals who smoke have infiltrated the narrow niche of patients with cystic fibrosis, which has resulted in surprising specialization and subsequent worldwide dissemination.

The genome of a magnoliid, Aristolochia fimbriata, shows no evidence of whole-genome duplication, a feature uniquely shared with Amborella trichopoda, the sister species to all other angiosperms. This ancestral structure of the Aristolochia genome offers great opportunities for comparative genomics.

Sperm length unexpectedly varies more than 3,000-fold across species, posing new questions for anisogamy theory and understanding the different forces shaping evolution of the male gamete.

A recent study reports the discovery of bat coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, including a virus that displays high sequence identity to SARS-CoV-2 in most genomic regions.