Capturing introns: Targeting rapidly evolving regions of the genome for phylogenetics

Researchers have developed a technique to capture rapidly evolving genomic regions to understand evolutionary relationships among closely related species. Typically, studies use protein-coding genes, which evolve at a relatively slow rate. The current study targets introns (the non-coding part of genes), which evolve at a much higher rate. Using publicly available genomic data, the technique was successfully tested on a recent, rapid radiation of plants in the Heuchera group.