Browsing by Subject "phylogenetics"
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Item Open Access Fern phylogeny inferred from 400 leptosporangiate species and three plastid genes(Taxon, 2007-01-01) Schuettpelz, E; Pryer, KMIn an effort to obtain a solid and balanced approximation of global fern phylogeny to serve as a tool for addressing large-scale evolutionary questions, we assembled and analyzed the most inclusive molecular dataset for leptosporangiate ferns to date. Three plastid genes (rbcL, atpB, atpA), totaling more than 4,000 bp, were sequenced for each of 400 leptosporangiate fern species (selected using a proportional sampling approach) and five outgroups. Maximum likelihood analysis of these data yielded an especially robust phylogeny: 80% of the nodes were supported by a maximum likelihood bootstrap percentage ≥ 70. The scope of our analysis provides unprecedented insight into overall fern relationships, not only delivering additional support for the deepest leptosporangiate divergences, but also uncovering the composition of more recently emerging clades and their relationships to one another.Item Open Access Reconstructing a B-Cell Clonal Lineage. II. Mutation, Selection, and Affinity Maturation.(Front Immunol, 2014) Kepler, Thomas B; Munshaw, Supriya; Wiehe, Kevin; Zhang, Ruijun; Yu, Jae-Sung; Woods, Christopher W; Denny, Thomas N; Tomaras, Georgia D; Alam, S Munir; Moody, M Anthony; Kelsoe, Garnett; Liao, Hua-Xin; Haynes, Barton FAffinity maturation of the antibody response is a fundamental process in adaptive immunity during which B-cells activated by infection or vaccination undergo rapid proliferation accompanied by the acquisition of point mutations in their rearranged immunoglobulin (Ig) genes and selection for increased affinity for the eliciting antigen. The rate of somatic hypermutation at any position within an Ig gene is known to depend strongly on the local DNA sequence, and Ig genes have region-specific codon biases that influence the local mutation rate within the gene resulting in increased differential mutability in the regions that encode the antigen-binding domains. We have isolated a set of clonally related natural Ig heavy chain-light chain pairs from an experimentally infected influenza patient, inferred the unmutated ancestral rearrangements and the maturation intermediates, and synthesized all the antibodies using recombinant methods. The lineage exhibits a remarkably uniform rate of improvement of the effective affinity to influenza hemagglutinin (HA) over evolutionary time, increasing 1000-fold overall from the unmutated ancestor to the best of the observed antibodies. Furthermore, analysis of selection reveals that selection and mutation bias were concordant even at the level of maturation to a single antigen. Substantial improvement in affinity to HA occurred along mutationally preferred paths in sequence space and was thus strongly facilitated by the underlying local codon biases.