The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08689-6

Tong, K., Datta, S., Cheng, V. et al. Genome duplication in a long-term multicellularity evolution experiment. Nature 639, 691–699 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08689-6

Any self-replicating program that's in an environment that's degrading it over time, should ideally remember what the 'source code' was. It makes sense that it's about where this property emerges early on.

I just realized that the publication comes from Will Ratcliff’s group, working on the evolution of multicelullarity. An entry was posted here with a podcast featuring him not long ago, in case you’re curious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43464770

It has happened in plants over and over again.

And in yeast there has long been evidence for WGD. See, e.g., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4529243/ & references therein.

Edit: I posted this without looking at the paper (which is about yeast). Doh.

Gene dose increases in plants lead to bigger vegetables and fruiting bodies. We've taken advantage of this during domestication of several species.

Gene dose increases in animals lead to total dysfunction and death in embryonic development.

Dosis sola facit venenum?

dose is such a weird term for "copies"

It’s quite… historical.

There are species of fish that have gone through whole genome duplication.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02299-z#:~:text=P...

In bacteria as well!

'Scientists uncovered how whole-genome duplication emerges and remains stable over thousands of generations of evolution in the lab.'

No, the title is accurate as currently state: "Scientists uncover key mechanism in evolution: Whole-genome duplication drives long-term adaptation"

Evolution is as fascinating as it is predictive. Very neat read.

Assuming the title was trimmed, I would remove that last “drives” since it can be interpreted as a noun.

Yes, I had to trim the title to the character limit. Thanks for the tip for next time I run into this.

Especially because there's a thing called a gene drive, and i thought this was a corresponding thing for whole genome duplication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive

My thoughts exactly!

I agree that the summary I copied and pasted doesn’t mention the impact on long-term adaptation. The title is a better summary than the summary!