The rules for plants can be different in water.

De novo gene origination from noncoding regions is a major source of genetic innovation. Dong et al. [1] (Nat. Genet. 2025; 57:2562–2569) reveal that bryophytes harbor an exceptionally high abundance of such genes, establishing them as a new and key system for studying the mechanisms and evolutionary consequences of new gene emergence in plants.

Genomic prediction (GP) based on molecular markers has substantially advanced genomic selection; however, prediction accuracy often plateaus despite continued increases in marker density and methodological refinement. This saturation limits the effective use of available genomic information. The emergence of genomic language models (GLMs) offers a new framework for incorporating richer sequence-based information into genomic prediction, potentially capturing biologically meaningful DNA sequence grammar that is poorly represented by traditional marker-based approaches. We conclude that the future of genomic prediction will be shaped not primarily by algorithmic refinement but by the biological expressivity of genomic representations, and that GLMs offer a principled path toward expanding this representational frontier.

Botany One interviews Dr Alexander Bowles, an evolutionary botanist interested in the processes that have driven plant and algae diversity

In the cloud forest of Costa Rica, many canopy-dwelling animals do their business in strangler fig trees, perhaps as a way of leaving messages

Roses don’t look beautiful by accident - humans and nature have shaped them.

Roses don’t look beautiful by accident - humans and nature have shaped them.

In the Multicellularity Long Term Evolution Experiment, diploid yeast evolve to be tetraploid under selection for larger multicellular size, revealing how whole-genome duplication can arise due to its...