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The Sox family of transcription factors is an important part of the genetic ‘toolbox’ of all metazoans examined to date and is known to play important developmental roles in vertebrates and insects. However, o...
Hox genes are key elements in patterning animal development. They are renowned for their, often, clustered organisation in the genome, with supposed mechanistic links between the organisation of the genes and ...
The intense interactions among closely related individuals in animal societies provide perfect conditions for the spread of pathogens. Social insects have therefore evolved counter-measures on the cellular, in...
Oligoadenylate synthetases (OASs) are widely distributed in Metazoa including sponges, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals and show large variation, with one to twelve members in any given species. Upon double-s...
In recent years, DNA barcoding has become an important tool for biologists to identify species and understand their natural biodiversity. The complexity of barcode data makes it difficult to analyze quickly an...
The family of D-isomer specific 2-hydroxyacid dehydrogenases (2HADHs) contains a wide range of oxidoreductases with various metabolic roles as well as biotechnological applications. Despite a vast amount of bi...
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Psychiatry 2019 19:221
Dictyostelid cellular slime molds (dictyostelids) are common inhabitants of the soil and leaf litter layer of fields and forests, along with animal dung, where they feed mostly on bacteria. However, reports on...
Seminal plasma proteins are associated with successful fertilization. However, their evolutionary correlation with fertilization mechanisms remains unclear. Cichlids from Lake Tanganyika show a variety-rich sp...
Adaptation to local host plants may impact a pollinator’s population genetic structure by reducing gene flow and driving population genetic differentiation, representing an early stage of ecological speciation...
Liriodendron is a genus of Magnoliaceae, which consists of two relict species, Liriodendron chinense and L. tulipifera. Although the morphologies are highly similar, the two species exhibit different adaptive cap...
Venom-expressed sphingomyelinase D/phospholipase D (SMase D/PLD) enzymes evolved from the ubiquitous glycerophosphoryl diester phosphodiesterases (GDPD). Expression of GDPD-like SMaseD/PLD toxins in both arach...
Mature male parr (MMP) represent an important alternative life-history strategy in Atlantic salmon populations. Previous studies indicate that the maturation size threshold for male parr varies among wild popu...
Obligate pollination mutualisms (OPMs) are specialized interactions in which female pollinators transport pollen between the male and female flowers of a single plant species and then lay eggs into those same ...
The standard genetic code (SGC) is a unique set of rules which assign amino acids to codons. Similar amino acids tend to have similar codons indicating that the code evolved to minimize the costs of amino acid...
Osteoglycin (OGN, a.k.a. mimecan) belongs to cluster III of the small leucine-rich proteoglycans (SLRP) of the extracellular matrix (ECM). In vertebrates OGN is a characteristic ECM protein of bone. In the pre...
In comparative neurobiology, major transitions in behavior are thought to be associated with proportional size changes in brain regions. Bird-line theropod dinosaurs underwent a drastic locomotory shift from t...
Echinoidea is a clade of marine animals including sea urchins, heart urchins, sand dollars and sea biscuits. Found in benthic habitats across all latitudes, echinoids are key components of marine communities s...
Adaptive evolution is one of the crucial mechanisms for organisms to survive and thrive in new environments. Recent studies suggest that adaptive evolution could rapidly occur in species to respond to novel en...
Comparing sexual size dimorphism (SSD) in the light of the phylogenetic hypothesis may help to understand the phenotypic evolution associated with sexual selection (size of whole body and of reproduction-relat...
A strong variability in cancer incidence is observed between human organs. Recently, it has been suggested that the relative contribution of organs to organism fitness (reproduction or survival) could explain ...
Following recent advances in bioimaging, high-resolution 3D models of biological structures are now generated rapidly and at low-cost. To use this data to address evolutionary and ecological questions, an arra...
Algal isomorphic biphasic life cycles alternate between free-living diploid (tetrasporophytes) and haploid (dioicious gametophytes) phases and the hypotheses explaining their maintenance are still debated. Cla...
Ependymins were originally defined as fish-specific secreted glycoproteins involved in central nervous system plasticity and memory formation. Subsequent research revealed that these proteins represent a fish-...
Breeding site choice constitutes an important part of the species niche. Nest predation affects breeding site choice, and has been suggested to drive niche segregation and local coexistence of species. Intersp...
Understanding the factors shaping population genetic structure is important for evolutionary considerations as well as for management and conservation. While studies have revealed the importance of palaeogeogr...
Phylogenies provide critical information about convergence during adaptive radiation. To test whether there have been multiple origins of a distinctive trophic phenotype in one of the most rapidly radiating gr...
One of the best studied developmental processes is the Drosophila segmentation cascade. However, this cascade is generally considered to be highly derived and unusual, with segments being patterned simultaneously...
Bdelloid rotifers are the oldest, most diverse and successful animal taxon for which males, hermaphrodites, and traditional meiosis are unknown. Their degenerate tetraploid genome, with 2–4 copies of most loci...
Predation is one of the most important natural selection forces. Prey species can optimize feeding behavior and escape from predators based on mobility conditioned by body proportions. With age, mobility capac...
The distinction between lineages of neotropical bats from the Pteronotus parnellii species complex has been previously made according to mitochondrial DNA, and especially morphology and acoustics, in order to sep...
Conditional differentiation is one of the most fundamental drivers of biodiversity. Competitive entities (usually species) differ in environmental or ecological niche enabling them to co-exist. Conditional dif...
The Pantosteus plebeius-nebuliferus species-group is a group of freshwater fishes distributed in endo- and exorheic drainage basins in the Mexican Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range system and central North M...
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:206
The axial skeleton consists of repeating units (vertebrae) that are integrated through their development and evolution. Unlike most tetrapods, vertebrae in the mammalian trunk are subdivided into distinct thor...
The ascomycete fungus Clonostachys rosea (order Hypocreales) can control several important plant diseases caused by plant pathogenic fungi and nematodes. Subtilisin-like serine proteases are considered to play an...
Transcriptome sequencing has become a method of choice for evolutionary studies in microbial eukaryotes due to low cost and minimal sample requirements. Transcriptome data has been extensively used in phylogen...
The cartilaginous fishes diverged from other jawed vertebrates ~ 450 million years ago (mya). Despite this key evolutionary position, the only high-quality cartilaginous fish genome available is for the elepha...
Opsins are G protein-coupled receptors used for both visual and non-visual photoreception, and these proteins evolutionarily date back to the base of the bilaterians. In the current sequencing age, phylogenomi...
Nucleoplasmin 2 (npm2) is an essential maternal-effect gene that mediates early embryonic events through its function as a histone chaperone that remodels chromatin. Recently, two npm2 (npm2a and npm2b) genes hav...
Drylands cover nearly 41% of Earth’s land surface and face a high risk of degradation worldwide. However, the actual timeframe during which dryland floras rose on a global scale remains unknown. Zygophyllaceae...
Southern Appalachian forests are dominated by second-growth vegetation following decades of intensive forestry and agricultural use, although some old-growth patches remain. While it’s been shown that second-g...
Islands have traditionally been the centre of evolutionary biological research, but the dynamics of immigration and differentiation at continental islands have not been well studied. Therefore, we focused on t...
The degree by which mechanisms underlying phenotypic convergence are similar among taxa depends on the number of evolutionary paths available for selection to act upon. Likelihood of convergence will be influe...
Mitochondrial and plastid DNA fragments are continuously transferred into eukaryotic nuclear genomes, giving rise to nuclear copies of mitochondrial DNA (numts) and nuclear copies of plastid DNA (nupts). Numts...
†Saurichthyiformes were a successful group of latest Permian–Middle Jurassic predatory actinopterygian fishes and constituted important, widely-distributed components of Triassic marine and freshwater faunas. T.....
Micro RNAs (miRNAs) and piwi interacting RNAs (piRNAs), along with the more ancient eukaryotic endogenous small interfering RNAs (endo-siRNAs) constitute the principal components of the RNA interference (RNAi)...
Past climatological events and contemporary geophysical barriers shape the distribution, population genetic structure, and evolutionary history of many organisms. The Himalayan region, frequently referred to a...
Previous molecular studies on the phylogeny and classification of clupeocephalan fishes revealed numerous new taxonomic entities. For re-analysing these taxa, we perform target gene capturing and subsequent ne...
Resolving the historical biogeography of the leopard (Panthera pardus) is a complex issue, because patterns inferred from fossils and from molecular data lack congruence. Fossil evidence supports an African origi...
Provision of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) in vertebrates occurs through the diet or via endogenous production from C18 precursors through consecutive elongations and desaturations. It has been...
Selection for a certain trait in microbes depends on the genetic background of the strain and the selection pressure of the environmental conditions acting on the cells. In contrast to the sessile state in the...
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