The zebrafish is a premier model organism for biomedical research, with a rich array of tools and genomic resources, and combining these with a fuller appreciation of wild zebrafish ecology could greatly extend its utility in biological research.
Drosophila has almost all transcription factor binding specificities available to humans; and human transcription factors with divergent specificities operate in cell types that are not found in fruit flies.
Vladislav Susoy, Erik J Ragsdale ... Ralf J Sommer
Evolutionary novelty is promoted by a macroevolutionary pulse of developmental plasticity, but is enhanced by secondary fixation, which permits developmental character release and further morphological exploration.
RNA sequencing of individuals within a wild baboon population reveals extensive power to detect functional regulatory variation, and suggests that the set of genes affected by such variation may be conserved across species.
Chia-Hung Wu, Maja Bialecka-Fornal, Dianne K Newman
Methylation specifically enhances the ability of hopanoids to rigidify membranes under physiologically relevant conditions, which impacts the current interpretation of the 2-methylhopane fossil record.
Natasha M O'Brown, Brian R Summers ... David M Kingsley
An identical DNA base pair change has occurred in divergent sticklebacks to alter the expression of a major developmental gene controlling armor plates, thus providing a molecular link between particular enhancer changes, cell signaling, and repeated skeletal evolution in natural populations.
Genes associated with age-based division of labor in ants exist in distinct regulatory and evolutionary contexts; genes up-regulated in young nurses are loosely connected and rapidly evolving while genes up-regulated in old foragers are highly connected and conserved.
Dhanasekaran Vijaykrishna, Edward C Holmes ... Ian G Barr
The analysis of the genomes of two lineages of influenza B virus (Victoria and Yamagata) reveal that their phylodynamics are fundamentally different, and are determined by a complex relationship between virus transmission, age of infection and receptor binding preference.
Karl R Wotton, Eva Jiménez-Guri ... Johannes Jaeger
Quantitative system-level analysis of a pattern-forming gene regulatory network in a non-model organism shows that dynamic changes in gene expression evolve through quantitative system drift.
