Section edited by Maria Anisimova, Arndt von Haeseler and David Liberles
This section considers studies on genome evolution and systems biology approaches to determining evolutionary processes.
Section edited by Maria Anisimova, Arndt von Haeseler and David Liberles
This section considers studies on genome evolution and systems biology approaches to determining evolutionary processes.
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Maleness in mammals is genetically determined by the Y chromosome. On the Y chromosome SRY is known as the mammalian male-determining gene. Both placental mammals (Eutheria) and marsupial mammals (Metatheria) hav...
Neo-sex chromosome systems arose independently multiple times in evolution, presenting the remarkable characteristic of repetitive DNAs accumulation. Among grasshoppers, occurrence of neo-XY was repeatedly not...
The primary energy-producing pathway in eukaryotic cells, the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system, comprises proteins encoded by both mitochondrial and nuclear genes. To maintain the function of the OXPH...
The Na,K-ATPase is a vital animal cell-membrane protein that maintains the cell’s resting potential, among other functions. Cardenolides, a group of potent plant toxins, bind to and inhibit this pump. The gene...
Genes encoding proteins underlying host-pathogen co-evolution and which are selected for new resistance specificities frequently are under positive selection, a process that maintains diversity. Here, we teste...
Morphological divergences of snake retinal structure point to complex evolutionary processes and adaptations. The Colubridae family has a remarkable variety of retinal structure that can range from all-cone an...
An important feature of eukaryotic evolution is metabolic compartmentalization, in which certain pathways are restricted to the cytosol or specific organelles. Glycolysis in eukaryotes is described as a cytoso...
Ancient Di-Qiang people once resided in the Ganqing region of China, adjacent to the Central Plain area from where Han Chinese originated. While gene flow between the Di-Qiang and Han Chinese has been proposed...
The presence of non-coding introns is a characteristic feature of most eukaryotic genes. While the size of the introns, number of introns per gene and the number of intron-containing genes can vary greatly bet...
The Cas4 family endonuclease is a component of the adaptation module in many variants of CRISPR-Cas adaptive immunity systems. Unlike most of the other Cas proteins, Cas4 is often encoded outside CRISPR-cas loci ...
Organisms living at high altitudes face low oxygen and temperature conditions; thus, the genetic mechanisms underlying the adaptations in these organisms merit investigation. The glyptosternoid fish, Creteuchilog...
Siglecs-11 and -16 are members of the sialic acid recognizing Ig-like lectin family, and expressed in same cells. Siglec-11 functions as an inhibitory receptor, whereas Siglec-16 exhibits activating properties...
Grass powdery mildew (Blumeria graminis, Ascomycota) is a major pathogen of cereal crops and has become a model organism for obligate biotrophic fungal pathogens of plants. The sequenced genomes of two formae spe...
Small non-coding RNAs, including miRNAs, and gene silencing mediated by RNA interference have been described in free-living and parasitic lineages of flatworms, but only few key factors of the small RNA pathwa...
Filamentous cyanobacteria that differentiate multiple cell types are considered the peak of prokaryotic complexity and their evolution has been studied in the context of multicellularity origins. Species that ...
Cetacean brain size expansion is an enigmatic event in mammalian evolution, yet its genetic basis remains poorly explored. Here, all exons of the seven primary microcephaly (MCPH) genes that play key roles in siz...
The molecular basis of evolutionary change is assumed to be genetic variation. However, growing evidence suggests that epigenetic mechanisms, such as DNA methylation, may also be involved in rapid adaptation t...
Numerous biological functions of long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) have been identified. However, the contribution of lincRNAs to the domestication process has remained elusive. Following domesticatio...
Pollen tube growth and fertilization are key processes in angiosperm sexual reproduction. The transmitting tract (TT) of Nicotiana tabacum controls pollen tube growth in part by secreting pistil extensin-like pro...
The distribution of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages in Brazil is heterogeneous due to different regional colonization dynamics. Northeastern Brazil, although being an important region in terms of human imig...
Transposable elements are major contributors to genome size and variability, accounting for approximately 70–80% of the maize, barley, and wheat genomes. PIF and Pong-like elements belong to two closely-related e...
The sulfoxidation of methionine residues within the phosphorylation motif of protein kinase substrates, may provide a mechanism to couple oxidative signals to changes in protein phosphorylation. Herein, we hyp...
Circadian clocks are found in organisms of almost all domains including photosynthetic Cyanobacteria, whereby large diversity exists within the protein components involved. In the model cyanobacterium Synechococc...
The cytosolic arrestin proteins mediate desensitization of activated G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) via competition with G proteins for the active phosphorylated receptors. Arrestins in active, including ...
Structural variation among genomes is now viewed to be as important as single nucleoid polymorphisms in influencing the phenotype and evolution of a species. Segmental duplication (SD) is defined as segments o...
The ever increasing availability of genomes makes it possible to investigate and compare not only the genomic complements of genes and proteins, but also of RNAs. One class of RNAs, the long noncoding RNAs (ln...
Insulin receptor substrate (Irs) proteins are essential for insulin signaling as they allow downstream effectors to dock with, and be activated by, the insulin receptor. A family of four Irs proteins have been...
Evolution of bacterial and archaeal genomes is a highly dynamic process that involves intensive loss of genes as well as gene gain via horizontal transfer, with a lesser contribution from gene duplication. The...
NADPH oxidases (NOX) are ROS producing enzymes that perform essential roles in cell physiology, including cell signaling and antimicrobial defense. This gene family is present in most eukaryotes, suggesting a ...
Clostridium difficile is a nosocomial pathogen prevalent in hospitals worldwide and increasingly common in the community. Sequence differences have been shown to be present in the Surf...
Opsins are light sensitive receptors associated with visual processes. Insects typically possess opsins that are stimulated by ultraviolet, short and long wavelength (LW) radiation. Six putative LW-sensitive o...
Mitochondrial introns intermit coding regions of genes and feature characteristic secondary structures and splicing mechanisms. In metazoans, mitochondrial introns have only been detected in sponges, cnidarian...
Changing environmental conditions pose a challenge for the survival of species. To meet this challenge organisms adapt their phenotype by physiological regulation (phenotypic plasticity) or by evolving. Regula...
In the history of population genetics balancing selection has been considered as an important evolutionary force, yet until today little is known about its abundance and its effect on patterns of genetic diver...
Chitin, the second most abundant biopolymer on earth after cellulose, is found in probably all fungi, many animals (mainly invertebrates), several protists and a few algae, playing an essential role in the dev...
Opsins are the only class of proteins used for light perception in image-forming eyes. Gene duplication and subsequent functional divergence of opsins have played an important role in expanding photoreceptive ...
Bacterial endosymbionts are found across the eukaryotic kingdom and profoundly impacted eukaryote evolution. In many endosymbiotic associations with vertically inherited symbionts, highly complementary metabol...
From a mtDNA dominant perspective, the exit from Africa of modern humans to colonize Eurasia occurred once, around 60 kya, following a southern coastal route across Arabia and India to reach Australia short af...
Although bats are natural reservoirs of many pathogens, few studies have been conducted on the genetic variation and detection of selection in major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes. These genes are crit...
Drosophila is an important model for studying the evolution of animal immunity, due to the powerful genetic tools developed for D. melanogaster. However, Drosophila is an incredibly sp...
In mouse ES cells, the function of Sox2 is essential for the maintenance of pluripotency. Since the Sox-family of transcription factors are well conserved in the animal kingdom, addressing the evolutionary ori...
Recurrence and predictability of evolution are thought to reflect the correspondence between genomic and phenotypic dimensions of organisms, and the connectivity in deterministic networks within these dimensio...
The development of multicellular organisms is coordinated by various gene regulatory mechanisms that ensure correct spatio-temporal patterns of gene expression. Recently, the role of antisense transcription in...
Transitions from marine to intertidal and terrestrial habitats resulted in a significant adaptive radiation within the Panpulmonata (Gastropoda: Heterobranchia). This clade comprises several groups that invade...
Predicting adaptive trajectories is a major goal of evolutionary biology and useful for practical applications. Systems biology has enabled the development of genome-scale metabolic models. However, analysing ...
A multiscale network of two galectins Galectin-1 (Gal-1) and Galectin-8 (Gal-8) patterns the avian limb skeleton. Among vertebrates with paired appendages, chondrichthyan fins typically have one or more cartil...
A deeply rooted phylogenetic lineage of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) termed lineage 7 was discovered in Ethiopia. Whole genome sequencing of 30 lineage 7 strains from patients in Ethiopia was perf...
RLSB, an S-1 domain RNA binding protein of Arabidopsis, selectively binds rbcL mRNA and co-localizes with Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) within chloroplasts of C3 and C4 plants. Previou...
Homology inference is pivotal to evolutionary biology and is primarily based on significant sequence similarity, which, in general, is a good indicator of homology. Algorithms have also been designed to utiliz...
The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) plays a crucial role in the adaptive immune system and has been extensively studied across vertebrate taxa. Although the function of MHC genes appears to be conserved...
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