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Mutation Induced Extinction in Finite Populations: Lethal Mutagenesis and Lethal Isolation
(Public Library of Science, 2012)
Reproduction is inherently risky, in part because genomic replication can introduce new mutations that are usually deleterious toward fitness. This risk is especially severe for organisms whose genomes replicate ...
FRAP Analysis: Accounting for Bleaching during Image Capture
(Public Library of Science, 2012)
The analysis of Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching (FRAP) experiments involves mathematical modeling of the fluorescence recovery process. An important feature of FRAP experiments that tends to be ignored in the ...
Positively Selected Sites in Cetacean Myoglobins Contribute to Protein Stability
(Public Library of Science, 2013)
Since divergence ∼50 Ma ago from their terrestrial ancestors, cetaceans underwent a series of adaptations such as a ∼10–20 fold increase in myoglobin (Mb) concentration in skeletal muscle, critical for increasing oxygen ...
Indirect Evolution of Hybrid Lethality due to Linkage with Selected Locus in Mimulus guttatus
(Public Library of Science, 2013)
Most species are superbly and intricately adapted to the environments in which they live. Adaptive evolution by natural selection is the primary force shaping biological diversity. Differences between closely related species ...
Massive Mitochondrial Gene Transfer in a Parasitic Flowering Plant Clade
(Public Library of Science, 2013)
Recent studies have suggested that plant genomes have undergone potentially rampant horizontal gene transfer (HGT), especially in the mitochondrial genome. Parasitic plants have provided the strongest evidence of HGT, which ...
A New Species of Skin-Feeding Caecilian and the First Report of Reproductive Mode in Microcaecilia (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Siphonopidae)
(Public Library of Science, 2013)
A new species of siphonopid caecilian, Microcaecilia dermatophaga sp. nov., is described based on nine specimens from French Guiana. The new species is the first new caecilian to be described from French Guiana for more ...
Evolution after Introduction of a Novel Metabolic Pathway Consistently Leads to Restoration of Wild-Type Physiology
(Public Library of Science, 2013)
Organisms cope with physiological stressors through acclimatizing mechanisms in the short-term and adaptive mechanisms over evolutionary timescales. During adaptation to an environmental or genetic perturbation, beneficial ...
Human Genetics in Rheumatoid Arthritis Guides a High-Throughput Drug Screen of the CD40 Signaling Pathway
(Public Library of Science, 2013)
Although genetic and non-genetic studies in mouse and human implicate the CD40 pathway in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), there are no approved drugs that inhibit CD40 signaling for clinical care in RA or any other disease. ...
A Phylogenomic Approach to Vertebrate Phylogeny Supports a Turtle-Archosaur Affinity and a Possible Paraphyletic Lissamphibia
(Public Library of Science, 2012)
In resolving the vertebrate tree of life, two fundamental questions remain: 1) what is the phylogenetic position of turtles within amniotes, and 2) what are the relationships between the three major lissamphibian (extant ...
Genomic Variation and Its Impact on Gene Expression in Drosophila Melanogaster
(Public Library of Science, 2012)
Understanding the relationship between genetic and phenotypic variation is one of the great outstanding challenges in biology. To meet this challenge, comprehensive genomic variation maps of human as well as of model ...