BOL

Imagine walking through a forest and finding two sets of footprints that always appear, disappear, and reappear together. You might wonder whether the animals are connected. In genomics, genes leave similar footprints across evolution. When two genes repeatedly occur together—or disappear together—across different species, their shared evolutionary history can provide clues about their function.

This idea, known as phylogenetic profiling, is the foundation of Profylo (https://github.com/MartinSchoenstein/Profylo, an open-source Python toolkit developed for comparing evolutionary profiles and discovering co-evolving genes. Profylo brings together seven profile-comparison methods and four approaches for identifying co-evolving gene clusters, making it easier to explore hidden functional relationships within genomes.

The study demonstrates that even a simple matrix of gene presence and absence can reveal meaningful biological patterns. By following these evolutionary footprints, researchers can generate new hypotheses about unknown genes, pathways, and molecular interactions. In a world where genomes are being sequenced faster than ever, tools like Profylo offer an exciting way to let evolution itself become a guide to understanding gene function.

More at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00239-025-10280-6