Browsing by Subject "Evolution, Molecular"
Now showing items 1-20 of 75
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A dimensionless number for understanding the evolutionary dynamics of antigenically variable RNA viruses.
(Proc Biol Sci, 2011-12-22)Antigenically variable RNA viruses are significant contributors to the burden of infectious disease worldwide. One reason for their ubiquity is their ability to escape herd immunity through rapid antigenic evolution and ... -
A high-resolution map of human evolutionary constraint using 29 mammals.
(Nature, 2011-10-12)The comparison of related genomes has emerged as a powerful lens for genome interpretation. Here we report the sequencing and comparative analysis of 29 eutherian genomes. We confirm that at least 5.5% of the human genome ... -
A modular switch for spatial Ca2+ selectivity in the calmodulin regulation of CaV channels.
(Nature, 2008-02-14)Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent regulation of voltage-gated CaV1-2 Ca2+ channels shows extraordinary modes of spatial Ca2+ decoding and channel modulation, vital for many biological functions. A single calmodulin (CaM) molecule ... -
A molecular phylogeny of the fern family Pteridaceae: assessing overall relationships and the affinities of previously unsampled genera.
(Molecular phylogenetics and evolution, 2007-09)The monophyletic Pteridaceae accounts for roughly 10% of extant fern diversity and occupies an unusually broad range of ecological niches, including terrestrial, epiphytic, xeric-adapted rupestral, and even aquatic species. ... -
A refined model of the genomic basis for phenotypic variation in vertebrate hemostasis.
(BMC Evol Biol, 2015-06-30)BACKGROUND: Hemostasis is a defense mechanism that enhances an organism's survival by minimizing blood loss upon vascular injury. In vertebrates, hemostasis has been evolving with the cardio-vascular and hemodynamic systems ... -
Abrupt deceleration of molecular evolution linked to the origin of arborescence in ferns.
(Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, 2010-09)Molecular rate heterogeneity, whereby rates of molecular evolution vary among groups of organisms, is a well-documented phenomenon. Nonetheless, its causes are poorly understood. For animals, generation time is frequently ... -
An Evolutionary Insertion in the Mxra8 Receptor-Binding Site Confers Resistance to Alphavirus Infection and Pathogenesis.
(Cell host & microbe, 2020-03)Alphaviruses are emerging, mosquito-transmitted RNA viruses with poorly understood cellular tropism and species selectivity. Mxra8 is a receptor for multiple alphaviruses including chikungunya virus (CHIKV). We discovered ... -
Ancestral population genomics: the coalescent hidden Markov model approach.
(Genetics, 2009-09)With incomplete lineage sorting (ILS), the genealogy of closely related species differs along their genomes. The amount of ILS depends on population parameters such as the ancestral effective population sizes and ... -
Behavior genetics and postgenomics.
(Behav Brain Sci, 2012-10)The science of genetics is undergoing a paradigm shift. Recent discoveries, including the activity of retrotransposons, the extent of copy number variations, somatic and chromosomal mosaicism, and the nature of the epigenome ... -
Beta2-adrenergic receptor gene polymorphisms as systemic determinants of healthy aging in an evolutionary context.
(Mech Ageing Dev, 2010-05)The Gln(27)Glu polymorphism but not the Arg(16)Gly polymorphism of the beta2-adrenergic receptor (ADRB2) gene appears to be associated with a broad range of aging-associated phenotypes, including cancers at different sites, ... -
Caspases: an ancient cellular sword of Damocles.
(Cell death and differentiation, 2004-01)Caspases are a family of cysteine proteases homologous to the Caenorhabditis elegans programmed cell death gene product CED-3. Caspases and their distant relatives, meta- and paracaspases, have been found in phylogenetically ... -
Co-evolution of a broadly neutralizing HIV-1 antibody and founder virus.
(Nature, 2013-04-25)Current human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) vaccines elicit strain-specific neutralizing antibodies. However, cross-reactive neutralizing antibodies arise in approximately 20% of HIV-1-infected individuals, and details ... -
Comparative genomics reveals insights into avian genome evolution and adaptation.
(Science, 2014-12-12)Birds are the most species-rich class of tetrapod vertebrates and have wide relevance across many research fields. We explored bird macroevolution using full genomes from 48 avian species representing all major extant clades. ... -
Complex evolutionary trajectories of sex chromosomes across bird taxa.
(Science, 2014-12-12)Sex-specific chromosomes, like the W of most female birds and the Y of male mammals, usually have lost most genes owing to a lack of recombination. We analyze newly available genomes of 17 bird species representing the avian ... -
Conservation, duplication, and loss of the Tor signaling pathway in the fungal kingdom.
(BMC Genomics, 2010-09-23)BACKGROUND: The nutrient-sensing Tor pathway governs cell growth and is conserved in nearly all eukaryotic organisms from unicellular yeasts to multicellular organisms, including humans. Tor is the target of the immunosuppressive ... -
Convergent transcriptional specializations in the brains of humans and song-learning birds.
(Science, 2014-12-12)Song-learning birds and humans share independently evolved similarities in brain pathways for vocal learning that are essential for song and speech and are not found in most other species. Comparisons of brain transcriptomes ... -
Delimiting species without nuclear monophyly in Madagascar's mouse lemurs.
(PLoS One, 2010-03-31)BACKGROUND: Speciation begins when populations become genetically separated through a substantial reduction in gene flow, and it is at this point that a genetically cohesive set of populations attain the sole property of ... -
Detecting structure of haplotypes and local ancestry.
(Genetics, 2014-03)We present a two-layer hidden Markov model to detect the structure of haplotypes for unrelated individuals. This allows us to model two scales of linkage disequilibrium (one within a group of haplotypes and one between groups), ... -
Distinctive variation in the U3R region of the 5' Long Terminal Repeat from diverse HIV-1 strains.
(PloS one, 2018-01)Functional mapping of the 5'LTR has shown that the U3 and the R regions (U3R) contain a cluster of regulatory elements involved in the control of HIV-1 transcription and expression. As the HIV-1 genome is characterized by ... -
Do asexual polyploid lineages lead short evolutionary lives? A case study from the fern genus Astrolepis.
(Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, 2011-11)A life-history transition to asexuality is typically viewed as leading to a heightened extinction risk, and a number of studies have evaluated this claim by examining the relative ages of asexual versus closely related sexual ...
