Cathepsin B protease mediates high population density-induced mutagenesis to drive genome evolution and competitive growth
Bin Yu, Yuji Suehiro, Bryan J. Johnson, Eui-Seung Lee, Dongdong Li, Yawen Huang, Joshua Johnson, Guangshuo Ou, James DeGregori, Shohei Mitani, Ding Xue · 2026
Read Cathepsin B protease mediates high population density-induced mutagenesis to drive genome evolution and competitive growth by Bin Yu, Yuji Suehiro, Bryan J. Johnson, Eui-Seung Lee, Dongdong Li, Yawen Huang, Joshua Johnson, Guangshuo Ou, James DeGregori, Shohei Mitani, Ding Xue (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13319838.txt.
Description
Bin Yu and ten co-authors report a 2026 worm study where crowding itself mutates the genome. How animal crowds rein in their own numbers is little understood at the molecular level. Crowded worms secrete a scissor enzyme, kin to a human one, that damages germ cell DNA and cuts brood size through a hormone signaling chain.
Over ten generations of crowding, the extra damage added about 2.8 fresh mutations per animal per generation, an eighty-seven percent rise in mutation rate. The new changes clustered between genes rather than inside them. Crowd-raised lines also gained a growth edge under crowding. The authors cast the enzyme as an engine that speeds genome evolution when space runs short.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Bin Yu, Yuji Suehiro, Bryan J. Johnson, Eui-Seung Lee, Dongdong Li, Yawen Huang, Joshua Johnson, Guangshuo Ou, James DeGregori, Shohei Mitani, Ding Xue |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 93 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |