evolutionarily

Enzyme, lost in most mammals, is shown to protect against UV-induced skin cancer

...enter (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) haveemployed an evolutionarily ancient enzyme-repair system to identify theprincipal type of DNA damage responsible for the onset of skin-tumordevelopment. The researchers' findings also suggest that this enzymesystem may be useful in developing preventative therapies against skin...

Ancient olfaction protein is shared by many bugs, offering new pest control target

... now shows that this gene's function appears to be evolutionarily conserved across very different insect species. Research by Leslie Vosshall's laboratory had previously shown that of 62 odorant-receptor proteins expressed by fruit flies, 61 are exclusively expressed in non-overlapping sub-populations of neurons, ...

A human parasite with a streamlined mitochondrion

...t mysterious organelle, called a mitosome, that is evolutionarily derived from mitochondria. As reported by researchers this week, the mitosome can represent a surprisingly pared-down version of the much more sophisticated mitochondrion. In their new work on the mitosome, a team led by Edmund Kunji at the MRC Dunn...

Fungus-farming termites descend from an African rain forest Eve

...ative contribution to decomposition processes) and evolutionarily (in terms of species numbers) most successful in savannah ecosystems. The researchers hypothesize that the ecological success of fungus-growing termites in savannas is due to the adoption of a highly successful rain forest process (fungal white-rot d...

Certain fish have a special mating preference

...might effectively represent gonopodium mimics that evolutionarily exploit a pre-existing sensory bias in females," he said. "That is, male ornamentation of the tail fin may have evolved largely due to the pre-existing preference for an elongate structure of a similar shape -- the gonopodium." ...

IMF Launches World’s First DNA Database for Myeloma Patients

...might effectively represent gonopodium mimics that evolutionarily exploit a pre-existing sensory bias in females," he said. "That is, male ornamentation of the tail fin may have evolved largely due to the pre-existing preference for an elongate structure of a similar shape -- the gonopodium." ...

Size matters: Preventing large mammal extinction

...ion in mammals above a certain size means they are evolutionarily disadvantaged in the face of human impact, compared to species of smaller size. Large mammals may therefore need a more complex conservation strategy, which takes into account their biology in combination with the external threats they face. ...

miRNAs and musculature

...henotype of Drosophila mir-1 (Dmir-1). Mir-1 is an evolutionarily conserved miRNA, whose expression in mouse and humans is limited to heart and skeletal muscle. Strikingly, their study shows that, in Drosophila embryos, mir-1 expression is not required for mesodermal cell fate decisions or cell proliferation durin...

Human brain is still evolving

...important organ that distinguishes our species, is evolutionarily plastic," he said. Finding evidence of selection in two such genes is mutually reinforcing, he pointed out. "Finding this effect in one gene could be anecdotal, but finding it in two genes would make it a trend. Here we have two microcephaly genes th...

MicroRNAs have shaped the evolution of the majority of mammalian genes

... Some of these potential microRNA target sites are evolutionarily "conserved," meaning that they show up in the same... high levels in the mature muscle. "Many of these evolutionarily conserved microRNA targets are known to be active in the processes of cell proliferation, developmen...

CO2 sensing proves critical for fungal pathogens to adapt to life in air and human hosts

...vidence for how CO2 sensing and metabolism utilize evolutionarily conserved enzymes to control the growth and sexual reproduction of pathogenic microbes. The two studies are reported by Joseph Heitman and colleagues at Duke University Medical Center and by Fritz Mühlschlegel of the University of Kent, Jochen Buck...

Key brain regulatory gene shows evolution in humans

.... They also said that the discovery of this first evolutionarily selected gene is likely only the beginning of a new pathway of exploring how the pressure of natural selection influenced evolution of other genes. They also said their finding demonstrates how evolution can act more efficiently to alter the regulat...

Neurons find their place in the developing nervous system with the help of a sticky molecule

..., in humans, language. In mammals, the largest and evolutionarily newest part of the cortex, the neocortex, is recognized anatomically by its six horizontal layers. The neocortex develops outward from an underlying zone of cells. From that zone, crawling neurons migrate radially out toward the surface or "superfic...

Ancient DNA provides clues to the evolution of social behavior

...ial tuco-tucos are closely related, it makes sense evolutionarily for individuals to cooperate, she says. ''If you're closely related to everyone, there's not as much reason to fight,'' Chan explains. ''Tucos have a high cost to dispersal-if they leave their burrow they tend to get eaten. If they stay home and hel...

Novel molecular 'signature' marks DNA of embryonic stem cells

...in the sections of chromatin that control the most evolutionarily conserved portions of DNA, particularly the key regulatory genes for embryonic development. "These signatures appear frequently in ES cells, but largely disappear once the cells choose a direction developmentally," said Bernstein. "This suggests the...

New mechanism for essential genome-wide gene silencing identified

...evelopment. "We've discovered what looks to be an evolutionarily ancient mechanism for broadly repressing and protecting the genome," says Shelley L. Berger, Ph.D., the Hilary Koprowski Professor at The Wistar Institute and senior author on the study. "We believe it to be the first identified mechanism of its kind...

Lizard 'third eye' sheds light on evolution of color vision

...is found in spineless creatures suggests it is the evolutionarily more ancient light-triggering signal. Although gustducin and Go are different molecules, they are similar and considered "related" proteins. However, gustducin and Go each activate different molecular pathways that work against each other physiolog...

Relationship of brain and skull more than just packaging

...of researchers now thinks that developmentally and evolutionarily that the two are incontrovertibly linked. The researchers, including biological anthropologists, physicians and a computer scientist, looked at the CT scans and MRIs of infants with particular types of craniosynostosis ?a condition where one or mor...

A clue from macaques yields evidence for impaired retroviral defense genes in humans

.... Instead, the human version appears to respond to evolutionarily older viruses that are related to now-extinct viruses that are resident in the human genome. Previous studies had suggested that relatively few evolutionary changes in the TRIM5 protein were responsible for this difference in battling retroviral in...

Face perception is modulated by sexual orientation

...rcuitry. It has been suggested that the rewarding, evolutionarily adaptive value of an attractive face can be dissociated from its aesthetic value: for example, an attractive opposite-sex face may signal that a potential sexual partner has a healthy genotype, but an attractive, same-sex face cannot indicate such re...

Where 'jumping genes' fear to tread

... a common ancestor. It appears that many TFRs are evolutionarily conserved features that existed prior to ?and have...osable elements compared to mice and humans but is evolutionarily distant from the two species. In contrast, the genomes of chicken and fish, which diverged from hum...

Genomatix technology facilitates de novo identification of new renal disease associated genes

...nctional unit of the glomerular slit diaphragm. An evolutionarily conserved promoter model was generated. Genome-wide scans using this promoter model effectively predicted a previously unrecognized slit diaphragm molecule which was then experimentally verified. This publication shows a straightforward approach ho...

Scientists discover a genetic code for organizing DNA within the nucleus

...form the core of the nucleosome are among the most evolutionarily conserved in nature, the scientists believe the genetic code they identified should also be conserved in many organisms, including humans. Several diseases, such as cancer, are typically accompanied or caused by mutations in the DNA and the way it or...

Massive duplication of genes may solve Darwin's 'abominable mystery' about flowering plants

...m the genome, a few mutations will be selected for evolutionarily advantageous function. Rather than gradually collecting genetic novelty by single-gene duplications, simultaneously having a full genome's worth of raw material to elaborate new genetic function could drive sudden evolution. But because of the rapi...

Brain region linked to fly slumber

...hanism regulating both sleep and learning could be evolutionarily conserved. So studying the mushroom bodies may help to throw light on the mechanisms governing vertebrate and invertebrate sleep. In addition to Allada, other authors on the Nature paper are Jena L. Pitman (co-first author), Jermaine J. McGill and K...

Scientists resuscitate a 5 million-year-old retrovirus

...amily of HERVs, called the HERV-K(HML2) family, an evolutionarily "young" family of retroviral elements. They aligned HERV-K(HML2) elements, determined their consensus sequence, and then constructed a retrovirus--Phoenix--from the consensus sequence by mutating existing HERV-K(HML2) copies. In addition, the r...

Study offers window into human behavior, brain disease

...ery, says Seeley. But given the fact that they are evolutionarily new, the explanation may be that there are still "kinks" in the genetic programming of the neuronal circuits. "VENs probably help us in some wonderful way, which would explain why natural selection has pushed their rapid evolution in humans," he s...

Male chimpanzees prefer mating with old females

...s, also suggest that this characteristic may be an evolutionarily derived trait that arose in the human lineage sometime after the lineages giving rise to humans and chimpanzees diverged. ...

Single molecular 'mark' seen as pivotal for genome compaction in spores and sperm

...hat the mechanisms governing genome compaction are evolutionarily ancient, highly conserved in species whose lineages diverged long ago. A report on the new study appears in the September 15 issue of Genes & Development. A "Perspectives" review in the same issue expands on the significance of the findings. "T...

Road-crossing in chimpanzees: A risky business

...s evaluate risk when crossing roads and draw on an evolutionarily old principle--shared with at least some other primates--of protective "socio-spatial" organization that produces flexible, adaptive, and cooperative responses by a group of individuals facing risk. The research is reported by Kimberley Hockings and ...

Single molecule extends fat mice lives by reversing gene pathways associated with disease in obese

...d online edition of Nature. "Mice are much closer evolutionarily to humans than any previous model organism treated by this molecule, which offers hope that similar impacts might be seen in humans without negative side-effects," says co-senior author David Sinclair, HMS associate professor of pathology, and co-dir...

Ape gestures offer clues to the evolution of human communication

...to determine shared ancestry. We know gestures are evolutionarily younger than facial expressions and vocalizations, as shown by their presence in apes and humans but not in monkeys. "A gesture that occurs in bonobos and chimpanzees as well as humans likely was present in the last common ancestor," said Pollick. "A...

Protein fragments sequenced in 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex

...ontroversial proposal that birds and dinosaurs are evolutionarily related. The HMS and BIDMC researchers, working with scientists at North Carolina State University, report their findings in the April 13 Science. "Most people believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but that’s all based on the architecture of th...

How to steer a moving cell

... said Klemke. "This is apparently a fundamental, evolutionarily conserved process in migrating cells. So it clearly has an important purpose to the cell." A network of proteins called the cytoskeleton, the cell’s internal scaffolding, determines cell shape, helping the cell to grow and develop "growth cones....