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Colonial invertebrates such as corals exhibit nested levels of modularity, imposing a challenge to the depiction of their morphological evolution. Comparisons among diverse Caribbean gorgonian corals suggest d...
Cryptic species are two or more distinct but morphologically similar species that were classified as a single species. During the past two decades we observed an exponential growth of publications on cryptic s...
The Class I cytokine receptors have a wide range of actions, including a major role in the development and function of immune and blood cells. However, the evolution of the genes encoding them remains poorly u...
Natural selection has traditionally been understood as a force responsible for pushing genes to states of higher translational efficiency, whereas lower translational efficiency has been explained by neutral m...
Onychophora (velvet worms) represent the most basal arthropod group and play a pivotal role in the current discussion on the evolution of nervous systems and segmentation in arthropods. Although there is a wea...
Helicoverpa armigera and H. zea are amongst the most significant polyphagous pest lepidopteran species in the Old and New Worlds respectively. Separation of H. armigera and H. zea is difficult and is usually only...
The analysis of genetic variation in populations of infectious agents may help us understand their epidemiology and evolution. Here we study a model for assessing the levels and patterns of genetic diversity i...
Termites of the subfamily Macrotermitinae live in a mutualistic symbiosis with basidiomycete fungi of the genus Termitomyces. Here, we explored interaction specificity in fungus-growing termites using samples fro...
Males of many species adjust their reproductive tactics with regard to their condition and status. For example, large males may develop weapons and fight for access to females, whereas small or undernourished ...
Action potential generation in excitable cells such as myocytes and neurons critically depends on voltage-gated sodium channels. In mammals, sodium channels exist as macromolecular complexes that include a por...
In contrast to DNA-mediated transposable elements (TEs), retrotransposons, particularly non-long terminal repeat retrotransposons (non-LTRs), are generally considered to have a much lower propensity towards ho...
The biosynthesis of aflatoxin (AF) involves over 20 enzymatic reactions in a complex polyketide pathway that converts acetate and malonate to the intermediates sterigmatocystin (ST) and O-methylsterigmatocystin (...
RNA molecules, through their dual appearance as sequence and structure, represent a suitable model to study evolutionary properties of quasispecies. The essential ingredient in this model is the differentiatio...
NADPH-oxidases (Nox) and the related Dual oxidases (Duox) play varied biological and pathological roles via regulated generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Members of the Nox/Duox family have been ident...
Recent publications concerning the interordinal phylogeny of placental mammals have converged on a common signal, consisting of four major radiations with some ambiguity regarding the placental root. The DNA d...
Ribosomal proteins (RPs) are key components of ribosomes, the cellular organelle responsible for protein biosynthesis in cells. Their levels can vary as a function of organism growth and development; however, ...
As bacteria, motile archaeal species swim by means of rotating flagellum structures driven by a proton gradient force. Interestingly, experimental data have shown that the archaeal flagellum is non-homologous ...
A controversial topic in evolutionary developmental biology is whether morphological diversification in natural populations can be driven by expansions and contractions of amino acid repeats in proteins. To pr...
The nematode Pristionchus pacificus has originally been developed as a satellite organism for comparison to Caenorhabditis elegans. A 10X coverage of the whole genome of P. pacificus is available, making P. pacif...
Septins are cytoskeletal GTPase proteins first discovered in the fungus Saccharomyces cerevisiae where they organize the septum and link nuclear division with cell division. More recently septins have been found ...
Alu elements are a family of SINE retrotransposons in primates. They are classified into subfamilies according to specific diagnostic mutations from the general Alu consensus. It is now believed that there may...
The melanocortin (MC) receptors have a key role in regulating body weight and pigmentation. They belong to the rhodopsin family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The purpose of this study was to identify...
The mosquito Culex annulirostris Skuse (Diptera: Culicidae) is the major vector of endemic arboviruses in Australia and is also responsible for the establishment of the Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) in southe...
The sensory drive hypothesis predicts that divergent sensory adaptation in different habitats may lead to premating isolation upon secondary contact of populations. Speciation by sensory drive has traditionall...
RNA editing and alternative splicing play an important role in expanding protein diversity and this is well illustrated in studies of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs).
Since the mid 1990s populations of non-native apple snails (Ampullariidae) have been discovered with increasing frequency in the continental United States. Given the dramatic effects that introduced apple snai...
Chitinases (EC.3.2.1.14) hydrolyze the β-1,4-linkages in chitin, an abundant N-acetyl-β-D-glucosamine polysaccharide that is a structural component of protective biological matrices such as insect exoskeletons...
Molecular clock dates, which place the origin of animal phyla deep in the Precambrian, have been used to reject the hypothesis of a rapid evolutionary radiation of animal phyla supported by the fossil record. ...
Maximum parsimony is one of the most commonly used and extensively studied phylogeny reconstruction methods. While current evaluation methodologies such as computer simulations provide insight into how well ma...
Non-long terminal repeat (non-LTR) retrotransposons are mobile genetic elements that propagate themselves by reverse transcription of an RNA intermediate. Non-LTR retrotransposons are known to evolve mainly vi...
Stowaway elements are short, non-autonomous DNA transposons categorized as miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs). The high MITE copy number in grass genomes suggests an active history of amplifi...
That pathogens and hosts coevolve is a powerful concept with broad theoretical and applied implications spanning from genetic theory to the medical and veterinary sciences, particularly in the context of infec...
Most phylogenetic studies using current methods have focused on primary DNA sequence information. However, RNA secondary structures are particularly useful in systematics because they include characteristics, ...
Lateral gene transfer is increasingly invoked to explain phylogenetic results that conflict with our understanding of organismal relationships. In eukaryotes, the most common observation interpreted in this wa...
Metallothionein (mt) transcription is elevated in heavy metal tolerant field populations of Orchesella cincta (Collembola). This suggests that natural selection acts on transcriptional regulation of mt in springt...
Species of the Drosophila obscura species group (e.g., D. pseudoobscura, D. subobscura) have served as favorable models in evolutionary studies since the 1930's. Despite numbers of studies conducted with varied t...
The walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) and Norwegian pollock (T. finnmarchica) are confined to the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, respectively, and considered as distinct species within the family ...
Paulinella chromatophora is a freshwater filose amoeba with photosynthetic endosymbionts (chromatophores) of cyanobacterial origin that are closely related to free-living Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus species...
Distinguishing the recent introduction of quinolone resistant gonococci into a population from diversification of resistant strains already in the population is important for planning effective infection contr...
The lemurs of Madagascar provide an excellent mammalian radiation to explore mechanisms and processes favouring species diversity and evolution. Species diversity, in particular of nocturnal species, increased...
EFL (or elongation factor-like) is a member of the translation superfamily of GTPase proteins. It is restricted to eukaryotes, where it is found in a punctate distribution that is almost mutually exclusive wit...
Heat-shock proteins are specialized molecules performing different and essential roles in the cell including protein degradation, folding and trafficking. GroEL is a 60 Kda heat-shock protein ubiquitous in bac...
Female only unisexual vertebrates that reproduce by hybridogenesis show an unusual genetic composition. They are of hybrid origin but show no recombination between the genomes of their parental species. Instea...
The type 1 (microbial) rhodopsins are a diverse group of photochemically reactive proteins that display a broad yet patchy distribution among the three domains of life. Recent work indicates that this pattern ...
Non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) are large multimodular enzymes that synthesize a wide range of biologically active natural peptide compounds, of which many are pharmacologically important. Peptide bo...
The rapid evolution of genital morphology is a fascinating feature that accompanies many speciation events. However, the underlying patterns and explanatory processes remain to be settled. In this work we inve...
High molecular weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GS) have been proved to be mostly correlated with the processing quality of common wheat (Triticum aestivum). But wheat cultivars have limited number of high quality H...
The GMC oxidoreductases comprise a large family of diverse FAD enzymes that share a homologous backbone. The relationship and origin of the GMC oxidoreductase genes, however, was unknown. Recent sequencing of ...
Coloration and color patterning belong to the most diverse phenotypic traits in animals. Particularly, teleost fishes possess more pigment cell types than any other group of vertebrates. As the result of an an...
Rubisco enzyme catalyzes the first step in net photosynthetic CO2 assimilation and photorespiratory carbon oxidation and is responsible for almost all carbon fixation on Earth. The large subunit of Rubisco is enc...
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