Background: With the publication of the draft chicken genome and the recent production of several BAC clone libraries from non-avian reptiles and birds, it is now possible to undertake more detailed comparative genomic ...

Background: Homology-based comparisons of the genes involved in innate immunity across many insect taxa with fully sequenced genomes has revealed a striking pattern of gene gain and loss, particularly among genes that ...

Aggressive behavior displays a high heritability in our study group of Golden Retriever dogs. Alterations in brain serotonin metabolism have been described in aggressive dogs before. Here, we evaluate whether four genes ...

A region of approximately one megabase of human Chromosome 12 shows extensive linkage disequilibrium in Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe. This strikingly large linkage disequilibrium block was ...

Background: Starch is of great importance to humans as a food and biomaterial, and the amount and structure of starch made in plants is determined in part by starch synthase (SS) activity. Five SS isoforms, SSI, II, III, ...

Most basidiomycete fungi actively eject their spores. The process begins with the condensation of a water droplet at the base of the spore. The fusion of the droplet onto the spore creates a momentum that propels the spore ...

The rapid closure of the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) leaf in about 100 ms is one of the fastest movements in the plant kingdom. This led Darwin to describe the plant as "one of the most wonderful in the world". The ...

Intralocus sexual conflict occurs when populations segregate for alleles with opposing fitness consequences in the two sexes. This form of selection is known to be capable of maintaining genetic and fitness variation in ...