The research team, led by R. Yoshioka and colleagues, collected twenty-eight fresh fungal specimens from dead twigs of lindens and related trees in Japan and Europe between 2006 and 2024. Twenty-six of these came from linden trees, most of them planted in botanical gardens or parks. When the researchers examined the specimens under the microscope, they noticed something striking: in nearly every collection, a coelomycetous asexual form was consistently associated with the sexual form. When single ascospores were grown in culture, the resulting colonies produced asexual structures that matched those seen on the original specimens, confirming that the two forms belonged to the same organisms.

This discovery of a completely asexual morph for the first time gave the researchers a powerful new set of characters. The genus is now characterised by clavate-ellipsoid, thick-walled ascospores that are strongly constricted at the submedian septum, the presence of paraphyses within the conidiomata, and globose to ellipsoid, one-celled conidia. To resolve the genus’s phylogenetic position, the team sequenced five genetic loci: the small subunit and large subunit of the nuclear ribosomal DNA, the internal transcribed spacer region, the second largest subunit of RNA polymerase II, and the translation elongation factor 1-alpha gene. Maximum-likelihood and Bayesian analyses of these sequences placed Splanchospora firmly within the family Neohendersoniaceae in the order Pleosporales of the class Dothideomycetes.

The phylogenetic trees recovered Splanchospora as a monophyletic clade with full statistical support, closely related to but clearly distinct from the genus Neomedicopsis. Within the family Neohendersoniaceae, which now accommodates eight genera, Splanchospora stands out for its combination of sexual and asexual traits. Notably, the presence of paraphyses in the conidiomata expands the morphological concept of the asexual stage in this family, a feature that distinguishes Splanchospora from its closest relatives Neohendersonia and Neomedicopsis, which lack these sterile filaments in their asexual structures.

Perhaps the most consequential finding concerns the type species itself. Splanchospora ampullacea, long considered the sole member of the genus and thought to be distributed across the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, turned out to be a species complex. Because the original type specimen of Sphaeria ampullacea, described by Persoon in 1801, is lost and the original description omitted ascospore details, the researchers designated a well-preserved Austrian collection as the neotype, complete with detailed morphology and DNA sequence data. Molecular analysis then revealed that what had been called S. ampullacea actually comprises multiple distinct lineages, including a cryptic European species and four entirely new species from Japan.

The four new species, named Splanchospora fulviconidia, S. microspora, S. oblongiconidia, and S. pseudomicrospora, were all isolated from linden twigs in Japan. Each shows subtle but consistent differences in conidial morphology. S. fulviconidia produces the largest conidia of the group, yellowish-brown and ellipsoid, darkening with age. S. microspora has smaller spores with a notably thick wall. S. oblongiconidia bears the longest conidia among the species with hyaline spores. S. pseudomicrospora, morphologically similar to S. microspora, can be separated by its slightly elongated, slender conidia and variable ascospore sizes, a variability the authors attribute to occasional meiotic failure that enlarges the remaining spores in the ascus.

Sequence comparisons reinforced these morphological distinctions. Across the five loci examined, interspecies variation was found at 22 of 452 sites in the ITS region, 10 of 1,346 sites in the SSU, 15 of 1,320 sites in the LSU, 85 of 1,065 sites in RPB2, and 102 of 1,253 sites in TEF1. Of the 5,436 total sites, S. fulviconidia showed the greatest number of unique bases or gaps at 117 sites, while S. ampullacea showed only 6. All SSU sequences of S. ampullacea and S. pseudomicrospora contained a distinctive 318-base-pair insertion, a molecular signature that may prove useful for future identification work.

The ecological picture that emerges is one of remarkable specificity and coexistence. All six recognised Splanchospora species were associated with dead twigs of linden trees, confirming that host preference for Tilia is a trait shared across the entire genus rather than a peculiarity of one species. In Japan, S. fulviconidia and S. pseudomicrospora were even collected from the same individual linden tree at the same time, demonstrating that although these species share a habitat, they remain reproductively isolated. The study also documented occasional occurrences on other host trees, including Carpinus cordata and Ostrya japonica, suggesting some latitude in host selection despite the strong association with lindens.

The researchers caution that the long-standing assumption of S. ampullacea as a single cosmopolitan species is likely to be overturned. Records from North America and the Russian Far East, where the fungus has been reported on Tilia americana and Tilia amurensis respectively, may represent distinct species reflecting differences in their original host trees. Given that four species were identified in Japan alone and one cryptic species in Europe, the authors consider it highly probable that multiple species also exist in these other regions. The emphasis on ascospore morphology and host preference in past identification efforts, they argue, is precisely why the genus appeared monotypic for so long.

The study concludes that conidial morphology, combined with secondary DNA barcodes such as TEF1 and RPB2, provides the most reliable markers for identifying species within Splanchospora and will be instrumental in uncovering unknown diversity. The revised generic concept, grounded in both sexual and asexual characteristics and anchored by molecular phylogenetics, resolves a long-standing taxonomic uncertainty and opens the door to a more accurate accounting of fungal diversity on linden trees worldwide. As culture studies of related genera such as Splanchnonema continue, the asexual morph is likely to prove equally decisive in untangling the evolutionary relationships of other poorly understood dothideomycetous fungi.

Subject of Research: Taxonomic revision and phylogenetic placement of the fungal genus Splanchospora

Article Title: Revision of the genus Splanchospora ( Pleosporales , Neohendersoniaceae )

Article References: Yoshioka, R., Voglmayr, H., Hashimoto, A., Matsumura, M., Kudo, Y., & Tanaka, K. (2026). Revision of the genus Splanchospora (Pleosporales, Neohendersoniaceae). IMA Fungus, 17, Article e179372. https://doi.org/10.3897/imafungus.17.179372

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/imafungus.17.179372

Keywords: Splanchospora, Neohendersoniaceae, Pleosporales, Dothideomycetes, fungal taxonomy, linden, Tilia, ascospores, conidia, DNA barcodes, species discovery, Japan

DNA barcoding relies on a short, standardised stretch of the 5′ end of the mitochondrial Cytochrome c oxidase I gene, or COI, which acts as a molecular identifier unique to each species. The approach was proposed as a complement to traditional morphology-based taxonomy at a time when expert taxonomists are becoming scarce, cryptic species keep turning up under familiar names, and the identification of larval and juvenile stages remains notoriously difficult. Because the same gene region is sequenced across studies, researchers can pool homologous data into shared reference libraries such as GenBank and BOLD, which in turn underpin metabarcoding and environmental DNA surveys of biological communities.

Yet the reference libraries themselves are far from complete. When a sub-sample of major marine invertebrate groups was curated from BOLD around the 8th International Barcode of Life Conference in Trondheim in 2019, 39 percent of the reviewed species showed problems such as misidentification, ambiguity or shared barcodes. A gap analysis of the Iberian macroinvertebrate community found that roughly 63 percent of species lacked a DNA barcode altogether, with a substantial proportion flagged for significant intraspecific divergence and possible hidden diversity. Crustaceans, despite their ecological importance, are among the groups where robust genetic data are most lacking.

The genus Pachygrapsus illustrates these problems well. A 2005 revision recognised 12 species and suggested that P. propinquus should be treated as a junior synonym of P. minutus, but in March 2025 that name was reassigned by a WoRMS taxonomic editor to an entirely different species, Metopograpsus thukuhar. Meanwhile, P. socius had been recovered in 2005 for the Pacific representatives of what was then called P. transversus, on the basis of morphological and genetic differences. Today 13 species are accepted in WoRMS, distributed across tropical and temperate intertidal zones worldwide, but the genetic coverage of these species is anything but even.

To quantify the gaps, the team retrieved all COI 5′ region sequences available for the genus from GenBank and BOLD, amounting to 332 haplotypes across 10 species, and contributed eight new COI sequences of P. maurus collected by hand at low tide from two islands of the Azores Archipelago. The new sequences, obtained from pereopod muscle tissue using standard extraction, PCR with the jgLCO1490 and jgHCO2198 primers, and bi-directional Sanger sequencing, were deposited in GenBank under accession numbers PQ570873-76, with the representative specimens registered in BOLD under the bin AGP6456. The full dataset, including reconstructed original datasets from earlier studies of P. crassipes and P. marmoratus, comprised 1,032 sequences.

The analysis combined a Maximum Likelihood phylogenetic tree built in IQ-TREE 2 under the TN+F+I+G4 model, with four sequences of the outgroup species Grapsus adscensionis, and a statistical parsimony haplotype network generated with TCS at a 95 percent connection limit. Members of the same species formed monophyletic groups with high support values, and the network revealed distinct clusters corresponding to each species. Pairwise divergences were calculated as uncorrected p-distances and Kimura 2-parameter distances in MEGA11, with the barcoding gap assessed for each species as the difference between the minimum interspecific distance and the maximum intraspecific distance.

The headline result is a clear barcoding gap for every species with sufficient data, with average interspecific p-distances of 18.75 percent, exceeding the 17.16 percent previously reported for decapods. Average intraspecific variation, at 0.70 percent, also exceeds the previously described maxima for crustaceans, which hover around 0.38 to 0.48 percent. The authors suggest that this elevated within-species variation may reflect the current taxonomy of the genus overlooking cryptic species, and since K2P distances are known to inflate divergence, the fact that the p-distance values still surpass published figures strengthens confidence in both the gap and the hidden diversity.

Two biogeographic patterns stand out. Populations of P. gracilis from the east and west Atlantic show substantial divergence of 3.6 percent p-distance, with their haplotype networks completely separated at the 95 percent connection limit, suggesting very limited gene flow across the ocean and a possible case of ongoing speciation. Notably, one cluster corresponds to a Galician population thought to have been introduced by ship hull fouling from the Ivory Coast, consistent with earlier records of Pachygrapsus on vessels and an identical 16S match between Galician and Ivory Coast crabs. Similarly, P. crassipes populations from the east and west North Pacific, separated by six mutational steps between their closest haplotypes, echo earlier findings of restricted trans-Pacific gene flow and a proposal to recognise them as two different species.

The study also exposes stark inequities in genetic data availability. Three species, P. corrugatus, P. maurus and P. socius, lacked any information for the standard barcoding region, and in the case of P. socius the available COI sequences come from a different, downstream region of the gene that cannot be compared directly. P. loveridgei, known only from museum collections, has no genetic data at all. By contrast, P. crassipes and P. marmoratus dominate the literature and citizen-science records alike, together accounting for over 90 percent of genus observations on iNaturalist, a skew the authors attribute to abundance, commercial interest and geography in the Northern Hemisphere.

The authors caution that COI phylogenies reflect only maternal lineages and that the high mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA can compromise resolution of deeper relationships, particularly given evidence from earlier studies that Pachygrapsus may be polyphyletic within the family Grapsidae. They therefore call for a thorough taxonomic revision integrating morphological, genetic and ecological data, including multi-locus approaches with both mitochondrial and nuclear markers. Beyond resolving the genus, the findings reinforce the value of DNA barcodes for broad-scale metabarcoding assessments, and highlight the need for greater research effort on the less-studied species to build a truly comprehensive picture of marine biodiversity.

Subject of Research: DNA barcoding of Pachygrapsus shore crabs to assess barcoding gaps, cryptic diversity and taxonomic uncertainties in marine crustaceans

Article Title: Mind the gap: DNA barcoding on Pachygrapsus crabs

Article References: Alves, C., Baptista, L., Madeira, P., Vaz Álvaro, N., Santos, A., Meimberg, H., Ávila, S. P., & Curto, M. (2025). Mind the gap: DNA barcoding on Pachygrapsus crabs. Metabarcoding and Metagenomics, 9, Article e152554. https://doi.org/10.3897/mbmg.9.152554

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/mbmg.9.152554

Keywords: DNA barcoding, Pachygrapsus, COI gene, crustaceans, cryptic species, marine invertebrates, phylogeography, haplotype networks, taxonomic revision, metabarcoding, BOLD, GenBank

The six newly sequenced species—B. repanda, B. axillaris, B. sinuata, B. martiniana, B. megacephala, and B. formosana—were collected from Yunnan Province in southwestern China, where more than half of the country’s Blumea species have documented medicinal uses. Among them, B. balsamifera, known locally as Dafeng’ai, has been used for thousands of years across China and Southeast Asia to treat eczema, dermatitis, beriberi, menorrhagia, and skin injuries. Modern pharmacological studies have identified L-borneol as its primary bioactive constituent, and the species holds a special place in traditional Chinese medicine as the only botanical source of Aipian, a substance used to clear orifices and invigorate the spirit. Other species such as B. megacephala, B. riparia, B. aromatica, B. formosana, and B. densiflora have likewise demonstrated considerable pharmacological potential.

Chloroplasts are the photosynthetic powerhouses of plant cells, and their genomes typically measure between 115 and 165 kilobases in a conserved quadripartite structure: a large single-copy region, a small single-copy region, and two inverted repeats. Because chloroplast DNA is maternally inherited, lacks recombination, and has a reduced effective population size, it is a stable and reliable tool for reconstructing plant evolutionary relationships. Advances in next-generation sequencing have made plastid genome assembly cheaper and faster, accelerating phylogenomic studies across diverse taxonomic scales. The research team used the Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform to generate 150-base-pair paired-end reads, filtered low-quality data with Fastp, and assembled complete plastomes with GetOrganelle, verifying each sequence by alignment against the reference genome of B. balsamifera.

The resulting plastomes ranged from 150,783 base pairs in B. sinuata to 151,281 base pairs in B. formosana, all falling within the typical size range for most angiosperms. Each contained the canonical quadripartite architecture, with inverted repeats measuring 24,924 to 24,957 base pairs, a large single-copy region of 82,524 to 82,894 base pairs, and a small single-copy region of 18,355 to 18,509 base pairs. Overall GC content was nearly constant across species at 37.5 to 37.6 percent, with the inverted repeats showing the highest GC content at 43 percent, followed by the large single-copy region at 35.6 to 35.7 percent and the small single-copy region at 30.8 to 31.0 percent. Each plastome contained 131 genes, including 8 ribosomal RNAs, 37 transfer RNAs, and 86 protein-coding genes, 18 of which were duplicated within the inverted repeats.

Whole-genome alignments with Mauve revealed no detectable gene rearrangements or inversions across all ten plastomes, confirming that Blumea’s chloroplast genome evolution has been relatively conservative. Sequence identity analysis using mVISTA confirmed that inverted repeats are more conserved than single-copy regions and that coding regions are more conserved than non-coding ones. Nucleotide diversity estimates yielded the same pattern: in non-coding regions, variation spanned 0.19 to 8.36 percent with a mean of 3.82 percent, averaging 4.21 percent in the large single-copy region, 0.87 percent in the inverted repeats, and 6.25 percent in the small single-copy region. In coding regions, variation ranged from 0 to 3.70 percent with a mean of 1.25 percent. Non-coding regions diverged 3.06-fold more than coding regions overall.

Six non-coding regions showed over 6 percent variability—trnH-psbA, rps16-trnQ-UUG, atpI-atpH, ycf4-cemA, ndhG-ndhI, and rps15-ycf1—making them candidate DNA barcodes for genus-level phylogenetic studies. Four genes—ycf1, rps8, ndhF, and matK—showed the highest variability among coding regions. Comparison of the inverted repeat and single-copy boundary positions across the ten plastomes revealed generally conserved inverted repeat regions along with limited structural variation at specific junctions. At the large single-copy and inverted repeat b boundary, rps19 sits in the large single-copy region 10 to 13 base pairs from the junction, while rpl2 resides in the inverted repeat b region 52 to 60 base pairs away. A truncated copy of ycf1 straddles the inverted repeat b and small single-copy junction, extending 0 to 21 base pairs into the small single-copy region in nine species; in B. balsamifera, this copy is pseudogenized. The intact ycf1 copy in the small single-copy region extends 564 to 581 base pairs into the inverted repeat a region across the small single-copy and inverted repeat a junction.

The research team also catalogued repetitive sequences across the ten plastomes, identifying 395 dispersed repeats comprising 181 forward, 202 palindromic, 11 reverse, and one complementary repeat. B. axillaris exhibited the highest number at 49, while B. martiniana had the fewest at 34. Forward and palindromic repeats were present in all species, reverse repeats were detected in six species, and complementary repeats were exclusive to B. tenella. Most dispersed repeats were located in the large single-copy and inverted repeat regions, with the majority residing in intergenic spacers. Repeats of 30 to 39 base pairs were the most abundant, followed by those of 40 to 49 base pairs. In addition, 79 tandem repeats and 547 simple sequence repeats were identified across the ten plastomes. Mononucleotide repeats were the most abundant at 425, accounting for 77.70 percent of all SSRs, and among mononucleotide SSRs, A/T motifs overwhelmingly dominated over G/C motifs at 417 versus 8. B. formosana exhibited the highest number of SSRs at 63, and B. martiniana the lowest at 50.

Codon usage analysis of 52 filtered coding sequences revealed identical patterns across all ten plastomes, with 29 codons showing frequent usage and 28 of those ending in A or U, while 30 codons were used less frequently and 28 of those ended in C or G. The codon UUA encoding leucine exhibited the highest relative synonymous codon usage value at 1.89 to 1.94, whereas AGC encoding serine showed the lowest at 0.32 to 0.33. Leucine was the most abundant amino acid at 10.97 to 11.07 percent of all codons, and cysteine was the least abundant at 1.12 to 1.16 percent. This strong preference for A/U-ending codons is consistent with numerous angiosperm plastomes and provides critical insight into the molecular evolutionary mechanisms underlying Blumea’s plastid genomes.

Phylogenetic trees reconstructed from 79 shared protein-coding genes across 23 taxa, with two Helianthus species as outgroups, divided the 21 Inuleae species into four major clades. All ten Blumea species formed a highly supported monophyletic group, internally divided into three subclades. Subclade I comprised six species—B. axillaris, B. oxyodonta, B. megacephala, B. repanda, B. sinuata, and B. tenella—within which B. sinuata was sister to B. tenella and B. megacephala was sister to B. repanda. Subclade II consisted of a single species, B. balsamifera, which formed a sister lineage to Subclade I. Subclade III comprised three species—B. aromatica, B. formosana, and B. martiniana—with B. martiniana as the basal taxon and B. aromatica sister to B. formosana. Notably, all three species of Subclade III belong to Section Macrophylla, and the Bayesian inference tree topology was entirely congruent with the maximum likelihood tree for the ten Blumea species.

Positive selection analysis using the MEME method identified 21 genes containing significant episodic positively selected sites along the Blumea lineage, while the FUBAR method detected no pervasive positive selection, indicating that the signals represent lineage-specific events. Among the 21 candidate genes, ycf1 contained the highest number of positively selected sites at 75, followed by ycf2 at 17 and rpoB at 7. These genes are primarily involved in photosynthesis, energy metabolism, gene transcription, and protein synthesis. Photosystem I genes psaA and psbB, photosystem II gene psbA, ATP synthase genes atpA and atpF, and cytochrome b6f complex gene petA support the overall optimization of photosynthetic electron transport and energy metabolism. Multiple NADH dehydrogenase complex genes—ndhA, ndhB, ndhD, ndhF, and ndhG—and the acetyl-CoA carboxylase gene accD are involved in cyclic electron transport and fatty acid synthesis, respectively. Blumea species are predominantly distributed in tropical and subtropical open habitats, exhibiting strong adaptability to varying light environments, and their relatively high photosynthetic efficiency and broad light adaptation range are consistent with the positive selection observed in these photosynthesis-related genes. The ycf1 and ycf2 genes encode key components of the plastid inner envelope protein transport complex, with Ycf1 potentially serving as the protein translocation channel and Ycf2 providing ATPase activity to energize the transport process. These two genes harbored the highest number of positively selected sites in Blumea, suggesting they may play important roles in the adaptive evolution of the genus and even the Asteraceae family. The mixed life forms within subclades—annuals such as B. tenella and B. axillaris alongside perennials such as B. megacephala—suggest that the evolution of life-history strategies in this genus may be more complex than previously recognized, and the unique phylogenetic position of B. balsamifera may indicate it has undergone a different evolutionary history from other Blumea species, possibly retaining ancestral traits. The identified SSRs and candidate barcodes may facilitate molecular marker development and population genetics, providing a genomic foundation for future studies on the phylogeny and adaptive evolution of this medicinally important genus.

Subject of Research: Comparative chloroplast genome analysis and phylogenetic relationships of ten Blumea species in the Asteraceae family

Article Title: Plastomes of Ten Blumea Species (Asteraceae): Comparative Analysis and Phylogenetic Relationships

Article References: Zhao, Y., Yang, W., Qian, C., Zhou, T., Zhang, X., Chen, X., Zhang, R., & Liu, X. (2026). Plastomes of Ten Blumea Species (Asteraceae): Comparative Analysis and Phylogenetic Relationships. Ecology and Evolution, 16(10), Article e74361. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.74361

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/ece3.74361

Keywords: Blumea, Asteraceae, chloroplast genome, plastome, phylogenetics, positive selection, Inuleae, SSRs, codon usage, DNA barcodes, Balsamifera, Yunnan China

The checklist is far more than a simple species tally. For each taxon, the authors provide scientific and vernacular names in English and Georgian, historical synonymy, nomenclatural sources, infraspecific variation, and critically, a biological validation status that distinguishes between biologically confirmed species, candidate species whose status requires further validation, and rejected taxa. This three-tier framework represents a deliberate departure from recent regional treatments that have elevated geographically distinct populations to species rank based primarily on mitochondrial divergence, a practice the authors argue has contributed to taxonomic inflation across the Caucasus and beyond.

At the heart of the paper lies a methodological argument grounded in the Integrative Species Concept introduced by De Queiroz in 2007, which considers species as taxonomic units with separate evolutionary pathways validated through differences at multiple independent loci. The authors, drawing on Wüster’s 2025 review, distinguish between a critical approach that disqualifies taxonomic status when firm evidence shows no species-level differences, and a confirmatory approach that merely notes insufficient support without rejecting a hypothesis outright. They argue that most recent species descriptions have used molecular and morphological data to confirm rather than to critically test, and that the decisive test—whether phenotypic or genomic markers show a stepped cline rather than gradual change across contact zones—has rarely been performed for Caucasian taxa.

The DNA barcoding component of the study is technically rigorous. Tissue samples were processed using Quick-DNA miniprep Plus Kits, and partial sequences of cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) were amplified by polymerase chain reaction using the primer pair LCOI490-JJ and HCO2198-JJ. Thermal cycling involved a two-stage touchdown protocol: an initial 15-cycle set with annealing temperatures decreasing from 55°C by 1°C per cycle, followed by a 25-cycle set at a constant 45°C annealing temperature. Sequencing was conducted at the Beijing Genomics Institute in Hong Kong, with extracted DNA deposited in the scientific collections of Ilia State University in Tbilisi and aliquots destined for the LIB Biobank at Museum Koenig in Bonn, Germany. The resulting sequences, ranging from 500 to 658 base pairs, were submitted to the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD) and compared against both BOLD and NCBI databases to identify Barcode Index Numbers (BINs) and nearest neighbours.

The results reveal striking inconsistencies in how genetic distance maps onto taxonomic status. Among nominally conspecific individuals from different geographic areas, COI differences reach 8 to 12 percent in several cases. Sequences of the Caucasian Salamander (Mertensiella caucasica) from central Georgia and northeastern Türkiye differ by 11.9 percent, aligning with earlier findings that identified an undescribed but genetically isolated evolutionary lineage in the Borjomi Gorge. The steppe-runner lizard (Eremias velox) from Georgia and western China differs by 8.4 percent, while the snake-eyed lizard (Ophisops elegans) from Georgia and Türkiye differs by 11.9 percent. These profound infraspecific divergences suggest possible genetic isolation between formally conspecific populations and may warrant future taxonomic revision.

Conversely, some nominally different species show remarkably little genetic separation. The Caucasian Toad (Bufo verrucosissimus) from Georgia differs from the nominal Common Toad (Bufo bufo) from Central Europe by less than 3 percent in COI, and mitochondrial Cytochrome b differences are below 2 percent. The European Marsh Turtle (Emys orbicularis) from Georgia and E. trinacris from Sicily differ by only 1.6 percent. The Eastern Treefrog (Hyla orientalis) from Georgia and H. molleri from the Iberian Peninsula, despite a broad geographic gap, reach only 4.3 percent divergence. The steppe viper (Vipera renardi eriwanensis) from Georgia and V. renardi from Central Asia differ by just 1.8 percent, leading the authors to treat the Georgian form as a subspecies rather than a separate species.

The checklist documents several biologically confirmed species with deep evolutionary histories. The Caucasian Salamander is separated from its closest relative, Chioglossa lusitanica of the Iberian Peninsula, by an estimated 40 to 70 million years of divergence, making it an Eocene relict endemic to the western Lesser Caucasus. The Caucasian Parsley Frog (Pelodytes caucasicus) diverged from its relatives since the Eocene and is endemic to the western Caucasus ecoregion. The Northern Banded Newt (Ommatotriton ophryticus) shows no introgression with its closest relative based on genomic data analysis, and the Eastern Crested Newt (Triturus karelinii) builds a monophyletic group with two allopatric congeners separated by a narrow hybrid zone.

The paper also addresses hybrid parthenogenesis among Caucasian rock lizards of the genus Darevskia, a phenomenon first described by Ilya Darevsky in the 1960s. The parthenogenetic forms D. armeniaca and D. dahli are hybrid origin species, with D. armeniaca supposedly arising from males of D. valentini and females of D. mixta, and D. dahli from D. mixta and D. portschinskii. The mitochondrial genomes of these parthenogens are shared with their matrilineal ancestors, explaining the very high sequence similarity among these species in the barcode data. The authors note that D. alpina may itself be a hybrid species between the caucasica and saxicola complexes.

Among the candidate species flagged for further validation are the Caucasian Smooth Newt (Lissotriton lantzi), which represents the oldest isolated lineage within the L. vulgaris complex but whose isolation time of approximately 6.4 million years may not suffice for postzygotic isolation; the rock lizard Darevskia obscura, elevated from within the D. rudis complex based primarily on mitochondrial phylogeny without evidence for or against gene flow across its contact zone with D. rudis; and several vipers within the Vipera kaznakovi group, including V. dinniki and V. darevskii, whose genetic differences from V. kaznakovi are modest and whose contact zones remain insufficiently studied with nuclear genomic data.

The authors conclude that the presented species list is not final and that nomenclature will likely change as genomic and population genetic studies either confirm or reject the true species status of formally described taxa. They emphasize that both under-describing and over-describing species diversity can be counterproductive from a conservation standpoint. While bureaucratic bodies prefer to include species rather than infraspecific units in conservation lists, ill-founded taxonomic inflation compromises species integrity and diverts attention from widespread taxa that remain unprotected across the most important parts of their range. The authors highlight a paradox: subspecies of several widespread amphibians and reptiles included in Annex II of the Bern Convention were re-described as separate species in recent decades, and as a result, none of those Caucasian forms are now prioritized in conservation programs supported by the European Commission because they no longer appear in the relevant annex.

Subject of Research: An annotated checklist of Georgian amphibians and reptiles with DNA barcoding data and critical taxonomic evaluation

Article Title: An Annotated Checklist of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Georgia with DNA Barcoding Data and Taxonomic Remarks

Article References: Tarkhnishvili, D., Iankoshvili, G., Seropian, A., Kachlishvili, N., & Todua, M. (2026). An Annotated Checklist of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Georgia with DNA Barcoding Data and Taxonomic Remarks. Caucasiana, 5, 59-138. https://doi.org/10.3897/caucasiana.5.e189214

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/caucasiana.5.e189214

Keywords: Georgia, Caucasus, herpetology, DNA barcoding, taxonomy, biodiversity, Annotated, Checklist, Amphibians, Reptiles, Barcoding, Data

The story of Reisseronia in Poland illustrates a broader challenge in modern taxonomy: the tension between molecules and morphology. When the first larvae were collected in Imielin in 2005, they were provisionally assigned to Reisseronia gertrudae, a species described from Austria. Only after careful comparison of adult structures, pupal morphology and life-history details did researchers conclude that the Upper Silesian population deserved status as a distinct species, R. imielinella, followed later by R. annae from the Janów district of Katowice. Both descriptions rested on anatomical differences that were subtle but consistent — the kind of differences that taxonomists have long used to separate closely related psychid moths. The new genetic data do not invalidate those observations; rather, they reveal that the mitochondrial barcode, the standard molecular yardstick for lepidopteran species, fails to register them.

The mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene has become the workhorse of animal DNA barcoding for good reasons. It is present in high copy numbers, amplifies reliably with the standard Folmer primers used in this study, and typically shows enough variation between species while remaining relatively constant within them. The 658 base pair fragment at the 5′ end of the gene that was sequenced here is the same region used across tens of thousands of animal species, which makes comparisons with reference databases such as the Barcode of Life Data System straightforward. For most groups of moths, a divergence of two to three percent in Kimura two-parameter distance corresponds neatly to a species boundary, and divergences below that level usually signal either intraspecific variation or very recent speciation events.

The Polish Reisseronia results sit squarely in that ambiguous zone. A divergence of only 0.9 percent between R. imielinella, R. annae, the Komańcza population and R. gertrudae from Slovenia falls well below the conventional threshold, and the complete absence of differences between the Komańcza specimens and the R. gertrudae barcode is particularly striking. At the same time, distances to other members of the genus range from 3.4 percent for R. tarnierella to 13.7 percent for two undetermined Greek species, confirming that the barcode can clearly separate most Reisseronia lineages when they are genuinely distinct. The pattern therefore is not a failure of the method in general, but a specific case in which morphological differentiation has outpaced, or is not captured by, mitochondrial divergence.

Parthenogenesis offers a plausible biological explanation for this pattern. In parthenogenetic lineages, mitochondrial genomes are transmitted clonally along with the rest of the maternal genome, and the absence of sexual recombination removes one of the engines that normally accelerates the sorting of mitochondrial lineages between diverging populations. A parthenogenetic lineage that colonized new habitats could accumulate morphological differences through developmental plasticity, epigenetic changes, or selection on nuclear genes, while its mitochondrial genome remains essentially frozen. The brachypterous females of Reisseronia, which cannot fly, also mean that dispersal is likely passive — through wind-borne first-instar larvae or transport of larval cases — which would limit gene flow even further and make founder events the dominant mode of population establishment.

The geographic picture adds another layer of interest. R. gertrudae was described from South Styria in Austria, and its wider distribution was recently confirmed in neighboring regions. The Komańcza site in the Bieszczady Mountains lies in the southeastern corner of Poland, in the Carpathian foothills, a region with rich and distinctive Lepidoptera fauna. The two Upper Silesian sites, Imielin and Katowice-Janów, sit in a heavily industrialized landscape where remnant meadows and post-industrial habitats often harbor relict populations of specialist insects. If all three Polish populations indeed belong to R. gertrudae, the species’ known range extends significantly to the north and east, and the ecological amplitude of a supposedly narrowly endemic species widens considerably — from subalpine Styrian slopes to post-industrial Upper Silesian grasslands and Carpathian foothill meadows.

It is worth emphasizing what the barcode data cannot resolve. Mitochondrial introgression, in which the mitochondrial genome of one species replaces that of another through hybridization followed by backcrossing, is well documented in Lepidoptera and can produce species that look morphologically distinct yet share identical barcodes. Nuclear mitochondrial pseudogenes, which are copies of mitochondrial DNA that have migrated into the nucleus and can be co-amplified with the true mitochondrial target, represent another potential source of misleading similarity, although the clean chromatograms and consistent phylogenetic placement obtained here argue against this particular artifact. In parthenogenetic organisms, hybrid origins are also a common phenomenon — many asexual animal lineages arose through interspecific hybridization — and such origins can scramble the expected correspondence between mitochondrial lineage and morphological species.

The authors’ decision to retain the species status of R. imielinella and R. annae despite the barcode results reflects a defensible taxonomic philosophy. Morphological differences in female genitalia, leg structure, antennae and pupal head plates are the product of developmental programs encoded largely in the nuclear genome, and a growing body of lepidopteran research shows that morphological and mitochondrial variation frequently decouple. Cases in which genitalia vary within species, and in which externally similar species share barcodes, are numerous enough that DNA barcoding is now generally treated as one line of evidence among several rather than a definitive arbiter. For bagworm moths specifically, where males are often rare, elusive or entirely absent due to parthenogenesis, and where identification traditionally relies on genital morphology and wing scale shape, the integration of molecular and morphological data is still in its early stages.

The sample design of this study also deserves attention when interpreting the results. Eleven specimens were analyzed: four each from R. annae and R. imielinella, and three from the Komańcza population. The R. annae and R. imielinella samples included both fourth-instar larvae and freshly emerged adults, which demonstrates that DNA of sufficient quality can be recovered from larval stages preserved in ethanol — an important practical consideration for rare species where killing adults for genetic work may be undesirable. The comparison set of nineteen additional COI sequences from BOLD, spanning Slovenia, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, Croatia, Germany and Serbia, provided a geographic breadth that would have been impossible to achieve through new fieldwork alone, and it is this reference framework that allowed the Polish specimens to be placed in context rather than treated in isolation.

What remains to be done is clear in outline. A larger sample of R. gertrudae from the type region in Austria would establish whether the Polish populations match the Austrian barcode exactly or show minor variation. Sampling additional nuclear markers, ideally genome-wide markers such as those generated by restriction-site associated DNA sequencing or whole-genome approaches, would reveal whether the nuclear genomes of the Polish populations diverge to the same degree as their morphology suggests, or whether they too are essentially identical. Such data would distinguish between two scenarios: one in which the Polish populations are recently derived morphological variants of a single parthenogenetic species, and another in which they are genuinely distinct lineages whose mitochondrial genomes have not yet had time to diverge, or whose mitochondrial similarity reflects a shared ancestral polymorphism retained through clonal reproduction.

The conservation implications are not trivial. If R. imielinella and R. annae are recognized as endemic Polish species, they carry conservation weight as national endemics with extremely restricted ranges, and the habitats they occupy — small patches of calcareous grassland and ruderal vegetation in an otherwise heavily transformed industrial region — gain a strong argument for protection. If they are synonymized with R. gertrudae, the local populations still represent genetically isolated, parthenogenetic lineages at the edge of the species’ range, and their vulnerability to habitat loss remains essentially unchanged. Either way, the small areas they occupy continue to deserve attention, and the study demonstrates that even seemingly settled taxonomic questions can be reopened by the first application of molecular tools to a neglected group.

More broadly, the Reisseronia case joins a growing catalogue of examples in which DNA barcoding has revealed unexpected genetic uniformity among morphologically differentiated organisms, particularly in groups with unusual reproductive systems. Parthenogenesis, hybridogenesis and other forms of asexual reproduction are known to produce patterns of genetic variation that do not map neatly onto species boundaries defined by morphology or reproductive isolation. As molecular surveys extend to more such lineages, taxonomists will increasingly need frameworks that can accommodate species whose genomes tell different stories in different compartments — a challenge that the Polish Reisseronia populations, small and inconspicuous as they are, help to bring into sharp focus.

Subject of Research: DNA barcoding of endemic Polish populations of the parthenogenetic bagworm moth genus Reisseronia

Article Title: DNA barcoding of the endemic Polish populations of the genus Reisseronia Sieder, 1956 ( Lepidoptera , Psychidae )

Article References: Domagała, P. J., & Larysz, A. (2025). DNA barcoding of the endemic Polish populations of the genus Reisseronia Sieder, 1956 (Lepidoptera, Psychidae). Nota Lepidopterologica, 48, 243-250. https://doi.org/10.3897/nl.48.162025

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/nl.48.162025

Keywords: Reisseronia, Psychidae, bagworm moths, DNA barcoding, COI, parthenogenesis, Lepidoptera, Poland, endemic species, molecular taxonomy, Kimura two-parameter, Bieszczady Mountains

Aulacids are among the most strikingly built wasps in the insect world. They belong to the superfamily Evanioidea and are instantly recognizable by a combination of odd proportions: a rounded, almost ball-like head; a heavily sculptured middle body section; and a laterally flattened abdomen that attaches bizarrely high on a pyramid-shaped propodeum, perched above the attachment point of the hind legs. Females wield long, sword-like ovipositors used to reach wood-boring larvae of longhorn beetles, jewel beetles, and wood wasps buried deep inside their host plants. These wasps are koinobiont endoparasitoids, meaning the female lays her egg inside a living host larva and the parasite develops alongside it before eventually killing it — a life strategy that makes them potentially valuable natural enemies of forestry pests, even though tropical host records remain frustratingly sparse.

Globally, the family Aulacidae comprises just 318 described species split between two genera, Aulacus with 111 species and Pristaulacus with 207, and researchers estimate the true total may approach 500. Both genera occur on every continent except Antarctica, although Aulacus is absent from the Afrotropics. Diversity peaks in the tropics, and the Oriental region — stretching from India through Southeast Asia — harbors a remarkably rich fauna that has only recently begun to receive serious attention. With the new study, the number of described Oriental Pristaulacus species climbs to 75, while the count for Thailand alone rises to 17 species of Pristaulacus plus a single species of Aulacus.

The new species, named after its type locality of Chiang Mai, was described from a female holotype collected in Huai Nam Dang National Park in 2008 using a pan trap, and a paratype captured in 2023 in a Malaise trap at 1,341 meters in Doi Phu Kha National Park, Nan Province. Measuring just 12 millimeters long, the wasp is mostly black with a yellowish-orange clypeus and first antennal segment, almost entirely orange legs, and a metasoma that glows orange except for a narrow black band running along the top. Its body carries a distinctive suite of morphological fingerprints: a head 1.2 times wider than long, a U-shaped median groove on the occipital margin, a single sharp tooth-like process on the lower margin of the pronotum, hind tarsal claws bearing four tooth-like processes, and an extremely elongate, slender petiole 4.8 times longer than wide.

What makes the description particularly robust is the integrative approach that underpins it. The researchers combined detailed morphology — examined under stereomicroscopes and photographed with multi-focus montage systems — with DNA barcoding of the mitochondrial COI gene. The paratype’s barcode differed by 12.95 percent from the closest Aulacidae sequence in the Barcode of Life Data System, which belonged to Pristaulacus vilhelmseni, and the team’s own genetic distance analysis confirmed a 14.3 percent divergence between the two species. Such large mitochondrial distances typically signal genuinely distinct lineages rather than mere population variation, and the molecular evidence meshed cleanly with the morphological diagnosis.

The phylogenetic component of the study is a genuine first. No molecular phylogenetic analysis of the family Aulacidae had ever been attempted before; all previous family-level work relied on morphology alone or addressed higher-level relationships within Evanioidea. The researchers assembled COI sequences of roughly 629 base pairs from 17 Pristaulacus specimens, drawing on both newly generated data — with GenBank accession numbers PX526003 to PX526010 — and published records from BOLD and GenBank. DNA was extracted from hind legs removed from both alcohol-preserved and dry-mounted specimens, amplified with standard LepF1 and LepR1 primers, and analyzed under a maximum likelihood framework in IQ-TREE with a million ultrafast bootstrap replicates and partitioned substitution models for the three codon positions.

The results revealed that all 12 morphologically recognized Pristaulacus species in the dataset are genetically very distinct, with the overall mean pairwise genetic distance reaching approximately 21 percent under the Kimura 2-parameter model. Some pairwise comparisons were enormous: the highest interspecific distance, 33.08 percent, separated the Nearctic species P. rufitarsis from the widespread Palaearctic P. gloriator. At the other end, the lowest interspecific distance, 13.14 percent, linked P. vilhelmseni from Thailand with P. intermedius from China. The new species P. chiangmaiensis grouped near P. vilhelmseni and P. intermedius, although the support for this trio of relationships was weak, and the authors caution that deeper branching patterns in a single-gene tree with limited sampling should not be over-interpreted.

The study also cleared up biogeographic mysteries hidden in museum drawers and national park traps. One Thai specimen of P. vilhelmseni, swept from vegetation in Doi Inthanon National Park in 2019, represents the first record of this species in Thailand, extending its known range from Laos. Meanwhile, P. erythrocephalus — a large, red-headed species up to 22 millimeters long — was confirmed from the southern provinces of Songkhla and Trang, part of a distribution that spans Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Species identities were not always straightforward: one sequence labeled as the North American P. strangaliae showed a suspicious 7.9 percent divergence from Canadian specimens, well above normal intraspecific levels, and the phylogenetic analysis suggests the U.S. specimen is most likely a misidentification that may represent a separate, closely related species.

To make this diversity navigable, the authors organized the Thai Pristaulacus fauna into three species-groups. The dominant P. comptipennis group, with ten species including the new species, is endemic to eastern and southeastern Asia and is diagnosed by a deeply notched occipital margin. The P. rufipes group, marked by a straight or weakly concave hind head margin, includes two Thai species, while the orange-and-black P. flavipennis group accounts for two more, including P. erythrocephalus. The group placement of four remaining species remains uncertain pending a full revision of the Oriental fauna. An illustrated identification key, an updated Oriental checklist with full type and repository details, and a comprehensive distribution map of all Thai species now give the next generation of taxonomists the tools they need to build on this foundation.

Yet the study also underscores how much remains unknown. Host records are missing for every Thai species in the genus, leaving the ecology of these parasitoids in tropical forests essentially blank. Molecular data exist for only a small fraction of the world’s 318 aulacid species — just 90 sequences corresponding to 31 barcode index numbers were available in BOLD as of August 2025, and only a handful of Sequence Read Archive records exist for the entire family. The authors argue that expanding gene sampling, extracting DNA from nearly all described species, and gathering biological and host data would be needed to build a truly robust phylogeny. For now, the discovery of P. chiangmaiensis in two protected Thai national parks stands as vivid evidence that even iconic, dragonfly-sized parasitoid wasps can evade science for centuries in the canopy-rich forests of Southeast Asia — and that many more are still waiting.

Subject of Research: Integrative taxonomy and DNA barcoding of Pristaulacus aulacid wasps in Thailand

Article Title: Expanding knowledge of Oriental Aulacidae ( Hymenoptera , Evanioidea ): An integrative taxonomic approach of the genus Pristaulacus Kieffer from Thailand, with a new record and description of a new species

Article References: Ghafouri Moghaddam, M., Turrisi, G. F., Heidari Latibari, M., Hebert, P. D. N., & Butcher, B. A. (2026). Expanding knowledge of Oriental Aulacidae (Hymenoptera, Evanioidea): An integrative taxonomic approach of the genus Pristaulacus Kieffer from Thailand, with a new record and description of a new species. Journal of Hymenoptera Research, 99, 779-832. https://doi.org/10.3897/jhr.99.174973

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/jhr.99.174973

Keywords: Aulacidae, Pristaulacus, Thailand, new species, DNA barcoding, Hymenoptera, parasitoid wasps, taxonomy, phylogenetics, COI gene, Oriental region, biodiversity

The core of the Detectron design marries two molecular technologies that synthetic biologists have refined over the past decade. The first is the toehold switch, a de novo-designed RNA regulator first reported by Green and colleagues in 2014. A toehold switch is a carefully folded strand of RNA that hides a protein-coding or functional sequence behind a hairpin structure. When a complementary trigger RNA binds to an exposed single-stranded ‘toehold’ region, the hairpin opens and the previously sequestered sequence becomes active. Toehold switches are prized because they can be designed almost arbitrarily, letting researchers program sensors for nearly any RNA sequence of interest. Their weakness, however, is that their outputs are typically proteins or RNA molecules that are themselves transient, difficult to multiplex, and poorly suited to sequencing-based readouts.

That is where the second technology enters. Retrons are bacterial genetic elements that naturally produce large amounts of single-stranded DNA inside living cells. A retron consists of a reverse transcriptase enzyme together with a noncoding RNA scaffold, traditionally divided into the msr and msd regions, that the enzyme partially copies into DNA. The result is a covalently linked RNA-DNA hybrid molecule, a peculiar product first characterized in the 1980s and later recognized as part of bacterial anti-phage defense systems. Recent years have seen retrons repurposed as tools for genome editing and DNA recording, and the Shipman laboratory has been at the forefront of that effort. Detectrons fuse the two systems: the toehold switch controls when the retron’s reverse transcriptase activity produces its DNA product, and the sequence of that DNA product serves as a barcode unique to the RNA that triggered it.

In practice, a Detectron is a single engineered RNA molecule. In its default state, the switch region folds into a hairpin that blocks productive priming of reverse transcription. When the target RNA appears and hybridizes to the toehold, the structure rearranges, the retron reverse transcriptase gains access to its template, and a short single-stranded DNA barcode is synthesized. Cells that never encounter the target produce little or no barcode; cells that do encounter it accumulate a measurable DNA record. Because the barcode is DNA, it is stable, it survives conditions that would destroy RNA, and it can be pooled, amplified, and sequenced alongside thousands of other samples. This converts what was once a per-sample fluorescence measurement into a massively parallel counting problem, one that modern sequencing platforms are exceptionally good at solving.

Getting the architecture to work well was not trivial, and much of the new paper is devoted to systematic optimization. The authors constructed a large synthetic library of toehold-retron variants, systematically varying structural parameters such as the lengths of the two stems in the hairpin, the loop that connects them, the bulges that interrupt base pairing, and the distance between the stem and the priming guanine where reverse transcription begins. By measuring barcode production for each variant in both the presence and absence of trigger RNA, they generated a quantitative map of how each design choice affects the on/off ratio, the critical figure of merit that determines how cleanly a sensor distinguishes true signal from background.

Machine learning then extracted design principles from that map. Using XGBoost, a scalable tree-boosting algorithm, the team trained regression models on the variant library and evaluated them with cross-validated metrics including the coefficient of determination, root mean squared error, and Pearson correlation. SHAP analysis, a technique that attributes model predictions to individual features, revealed which structural parameters mattered most. The findings were sometimes counterintuitive: shortening the loop below roughly seven nucleotides sharply degraded both signal strength and on/off ratios, while specific combinations of stem lengths and hairpin folding free energy proved far more predictive of performance than any single parameter alone. Armed with these rules, the researchers built Detectron-V2, a redesigned second-generation device that achieved substantially enhanced on/off ratios and high specificity across a panel of phage transcripts.

To demonstrate the platform’s real-world utility, Han and Shipman turned to bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria. Detectrons were programmed to recognize transcripts from specific phage genes, including the major capsid gene gp23 of phage T4 and sequences from phage T7. When a bacterial cell carrying the appropriate Detectron was infected by the matching phage, the viral RNA triggered barcode synthesis; unrelated phages did not. The team even showed that the response was dose-dependent, with barcode enrichment scaling with the multiplicity of infection, meaning the devices do not merely register that an infection occurred but carry quantitative information about how intense it was. Target-site selection within a viral transcript also mattered, with sites predicted to be more locally accessible by RNA folding algorithms yielding better sensor performance.

The most striking demonstration came in pooled cultures. The researchers mixed together bacterial strains, each carrying a Detectron tuned to a different phage, and infected the pooled population. After sequencing the barcode pool, they could determine which phages had infected which strains within a single pot, without any physical separation of the samples. They extended this to ratiometric susceptibility profiling, in which the relative abundance of barcodes reports quantitatively on how susceptible different host strains are to different phages. For the phage-therapy field, where matching the right phage to the right bacterial infection is the central clinical challenge and current methods require growing each phage-host pair separately, a pooled sequencing-based assay of this kind could dramatically accelerate screening.

Beyond virology, Detectrons join a growing family of molecular recording technologies that include CRISPR-based recorders and recombinase state machines, but they occupy a distinctive niche. Where CRISPR recorders typically write into the genome through DNA cleavage events, Detectrons produce their records through reverse transcription of an engineered RNA template, a process that does not require the recorder to target the cell’s own DNA. That makes the approach potentially safer and more modular, and the authors note that the framework enables alternative modes of transcript-based sensing with applications including viral infection detection more broadly. The ability to record transcriptional events in complex bacterial communities, such as microbiomes, suggests uses in environmental monitoring and diagnostics where cells must be observed in place rather than disrupted.

The work also carries the familiar caveats of early synthetic biology. The demonstrations were performed in engineered bacterial strains with inducible promoters and defined phage infections, and porting the technology to other organisms, to natural microbial communities, or to mammalian cells will require re-optimization of the switch architecture for each new context. Han and Shipman have filed a provisional patent application on the technology, signaling commercial interest, and the complete variant libraries, sequences, code, and statistical data have been released to support replication and extension by other groups. Still, the conceptual advance is clear: a programmable RNA sensor whose output is not a fading fluorescent glow but a stable, sequenceable, multiplexable DNA barcode. As the design rules mature, devices of this kind could turn living cells into their own record-keepers, quietly logging which genes spoke and when, for anyone with a sequencer to read the archive.

Subject of Research: Synthetic RNA biosensors that record transcript detection as DNA barcodes via retron reverse transcription

Article Title: Detectrons convert transient RNA sequences into stable DNA barcodes for high-throughput analysis of RNA-dependent processes

Article References: Han, J., & Shipman, S. L. (2026). Detectrons convert transient RNA sequences into stable DNA barcodes for high-throughput analysis of RNA-dependent processes. Nature Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-026-03334-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41587-026-03334-7

Keywords: Detectrons, toehold switches, retrons, reverse transcriptase, DNA barcodes, RNA sensing, synthetic biology, bacteriophages, phage therapy, machine learning, molecular recording, Nature Biotechnology