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The gene expression system of chloroplasts is far more complex than that of their cyanobacterial progenitor. This gain in complexity affects in particular RNA metabolism, specifically the transcription and mat...
Gene duplication provides opportunities for lineage diversification and evolution of developmental novelties. Duplicated genes generally either disappear by accumulation of mutations (nonfunctionalization), or...
Vertebrate alpha (α)- and beta (β)-globin gene families exemplify the way in which genomes evolve to produce functional complexity. From tandem duplication of a single globin locus, the α- and β-globin cluster...
Traditional comparative morphological analyses and subsequent three-dimensional reconstructions suffer from a number of drawbacks. This is particularly evident in the case of soft tissue studies that are techn...
Periodic patterning of iterative structures is a fundamental process during embryonic organization and development. Studies have shown how gene networks are employed to pattern butterfly eyespots, fly bristles...
Mutations in SPG4 cause the most common form of autosomal dominant hereditary spastic paraplegia, a neurodegenerative disease characterized by weakness and spasticity of the lower limbs due to degeneration of the...
We have applied a high-throughput pyrosequencing technology for transcriptome profiling of Caenorhabditis elegans in its first larval stage. Using this approach, we have generated a large amount of data for expre...
tmRNA acts first as a tRNA and then as an mRNA to rescue stalled ribosomes in eubacteria. Two unanswered questions about tmRNA function remain: how does tmRNA, lacking an anticodon, bypass the decoding machine...
Genetic tests of paleoecological hypotheses have been rare, partly because recent genetic divergence is difficult to detect and time. According to fossil plant data, continuous woodland in the southwestern USA...
Inherited bacteria have come to be recognised as important components of arthropod biology. In addition to mutualistic symbioses, a range of other inherited bacteria are known to act either as reproductive par...
Arsenic is a toxic and highly abundant metalloid that endangers human health through drinking water and the food chain. The most common forms of arsenic in the environment are arsenate (As(V)) and arsenite (As...
New methods are needed for research into non-model organisms, to monitor the effects of toxic disruption at both the molecular and functional organism level. We exposed earthworms (Lumbricus rubellus Hoffmeister)...
The aging of reproductive organs is not only a major social issue, but of special interest in aging research. A long-standing view of 'immortal germ line versus mortal soma' poses an important question of whet...
Geographic selection mosaics, in which species exert different evolutionary impacts on each other in different environments, may drive diversification in coevolving species. We studied the potential for geogra...
Cichlid fishes have radiated into hundreds of species in the Great Lakes of Africa. Brightly colored males display on leks and vie to be chosen by females as mates. Strong discrimination by females causes diff...
The y-larva, a crustacean larval type first identified more than 100 years ago, has been found in marine plankton samples collected in the arctic, temperate and tropical regions of all oceans. The great specie...
Explaining public-goods cooperation is a challenge for evolutionary biology. However, cooperation is expected to more readily evolve if it imposes a smaller cost. Such costs of cooperation are expected to decl...
A central question in evolutionary biology is how cryptic species maintain species cohesiveness in an area of sympatry. The coexistence of sympatrically living cryptic species requires the evolution of species...
Flying lemurs or Colugos (order Dermoptera) represent an ancient mammalian lineage that contains only two extant species. Although molecular evidence strongly supports that the orders Dermoptera, Scandentia, L...
Thermogenic brown adipose tissue has never been described in birds or other non-mammalian vertebrates. Brown adipocytes in mammals are distinguished from the more common white fat adipocytes by having numerous...
Polyploidy has played a prominent role in shaping the genomic architecture of the angiosperms. Through allopolyploidization, several modern Gossypium (cotton) species contain two divergent, although largely redun...
The proneural proteins Mash1 and Ngn2 are key cell autonomous regulators of neurogenesis in the mammalian central nervous system, yet little is known about the molecular pathways regulated by these transcripti...
Afrotheria comprises a newly recognized clade of mammals with strong molecular evidence for its monophyly. In contrast, morphological data uniting its diverse constituents, including elephants, sea cows, hyrax...
In the 15 years that have passed since the cloning of Aequorea victoria green fluorescent protein (avGFP), the expanding set of fluorescent protein (FP) variants has become entrenched as an indispensable toolkit ...
Double-stranded (ds) RNA, generated during viral infection, binds and activates the mammalian anti-viral protein kinase PKR, which phosphorylates the translation initiation factor eIF2α leading to the general ...
The invasive garden ant, Lasius neglectus, is the most recently detected pest ant and the first known invasive ant able to become established and thrive in the temperate regions of Eurasia. In this study, we aim ...
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Biology 2018 16:128
Adaptive radiation, the evolution of ecological and phenotypic diversity from a common ancestor, is a central concept in evolutionary biology and characterizes the evolutionary histories of many groups of orga...
In order to initiate plant infection, fungal spores must germinate and penetrate into the host plant. Many fungal species differentiate specialized infection structures called appressoria on the host surface, ...
The transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), otherwise known as the prion diseases, occur following the conversion of the normal cellular prion protein (PrPC) to an alternatively folded isoform (PrPSc). ...
The amphipod crustacean Palmorchestia hypogaea occurs only in La Palma (Canary Islands) and is one of the few terrestrial amphipods in the world that have adapted to a strictly troglobitic life in volcanic cave h...
Determining an absolute timescale for avian evolutionary history has proven contentious. The two sources of information available, paleontological data and inference from extant molecular genetic sequences (co...
The heat shock protein Hsp70 promotes inducible thermotolerance in nearly every organism examined to date. Hsp70 interacts with a network of other stress-response proteins, and dissecting the relative roles of...
Tinnitus is an auditory phantom phenomenon characterized by the sensation of sounds without objectively identifiable sound sources. To date, its causes are not well understood. Previous research found altered ...
Left hemispheric dominance of language processing and handedness, previously thought to be unique to humans, is currently under debate. To gain an insight into the origin of lateralization in primates, we have...
To study the organization and interaction with the fusion domain (or fusion peptide, FP) of the transmembrane domain (TMD) of influenza virus envelope glycoprotein for its role in membrane fusion which is also...
O-fucosyltransferase1 (OFUT1) is a conserved ER protein essential for Notch signaling. OFUT1 glycosylates EGF domains, which can then be further modified by the N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase Fringe. OFUT1 also...
A central question in the evolutionary diversification of large, widespread, mobile mammals is how substantial differentiation can arise, particularly in the absence of topographic or habitat barriers to dispe...
Insects helped pioneer, and persist as model organisms for, the study of specific aspects of immunity. Although they lack an adaptive immune system, insects possess an innate immune system that recognizes and ...
The genus Cuscuta L. (Convolvulaceae), commonly known as dodders, are epiphytic vines that invade the stems of their host with haustorial feeding structures at the points of contact. Although they lack expanded l...
The urine of freshwater fish species investigated so far acts as a vehicle for reproductive pheromones affecting the behaviour and physiology of the opposite sex. However, the role of urinary pheromones in int...
Cell shape changes during cytokinesis and chemotaxis require regulation of the actin cytoskeletal network. Dynacortin, an actin cross-linking protein, localizes to the cell cortex and contributes to cortical r...
In daily life, we are exposed to different sound inputs simultaneously. During neural encoding in the auditory pathway, neural activities elicited by these different sounds interact with each other. In the pre...
The exceptionally diverse species flocks of cichlid fishes in East Africa are prime examples of parallel adaptive radiations. About 80% of East Africa's more than 1 800 endemic cichlid species, and all species...
The genetic architecture of a quantitative trait influences the phenotypic response to natural or artificial selection. One of the main objectives of genetic mapping studies is to identify the genetic factors ...
Plants, plant-feeding insects, and insect parasitoids form some of the most complex and species-rich food webs. According to the classic escape-and-radiate (EAR) hypothesis, these hyperdiverse communities resu...
Carpenter ants (genus Camponotus) are considered to be omnivores. Nonetheless, the genome sequence of Blochmannia floridanus, the obligate intracellular endosymbiont of Camponotus floridanus, suggests a function ...
The homeobox genes are a large and diverse group of genes, many of which play important roles in the embryonic development of animals. Increasingly, homeobox genes are being compared between genomes in an atte...
Direct visualization of data sets in the context of biochemical network drawings is one of the most appealing approaches in the field of data evaluation within systems biology. One important type of informatio...
Crustaceans represent an attractive model to study biomineralization and cuticle matrix formation, as these events are precisely timed to occur at certain stages of the moult cycle. Moulting, the process by wh...
Shaker codes for a Drosophila voltage-dependent potassium channel. Flies carrying Shaker null or hypomorphic mutations sleep 3–4 h/day instead of 8–14 h/day as their wild-type siblings do. Shaker-like channels a...
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