Despite our intuition, birds are no smaller than mammals when the constraints of a flying body plan are taken into account. Nevertheless, the largest mammals are ten times the mass of the largest birds. Allometric ...

<p>The activation and maintenance of plant immune responses require a significant amount of energy because they are accompanied by massive transcriptional reprogramming. Spurious activation of plant defense machinery can ...

GTPases are integral components of virtually every known signal transduction pathway, and mutations in GTPases frequently cause disease. A genomic analysis identified and annotated 174 GTPases in the sea urchin genome (with ...

<p>Recombination occurs during meiosis to produce new allelic combinations in natural populations, and thus strongly affects evolutionary processes. The model system Drosophila has been crucial for understanding the mechanics ...

<p>An organism's ability to detect and interpret chemical signals from the surrounding environment is vital to its survival. In mammals, the vomeronasal organ provides an integral part of this requirement as it allows for ...

<p>Changing environmental conditions may present substantial challenges to organisms experiencing them. In animals, the fastest way to respond to these changes is often by altering behavior. This ability, called behavioral ...

<p>The cell cycle is a series of ordered events that culminates in a single cell dividing into two daughter cells. These events must be properly coordinated to ensure the faithful passage of genetic material. How cell ...

<p>Marsupial mammals are born at an embryonic state compared to their eutherian counterparts, yet certain features are accelerated to aid in survival. One particularly notable heterochrony is the steep gradient in development ...

<p>Although we often study mutualisms (interactions in which both species benefit) at the level of the individual partners, mutualistic interactions take place in the context of populations and communities. Sharing ...

<p>Ecologists have long sought to uncover the mechanisms behind large-scale, macroecological patterns in the distribution and abundance of species. Macroecological patterns are often attributed to the dynamics of dispersal ...