Mohammed Kaplan, Debnath Ghosal ... Grant J Jensen
A correlation between the periplasmic embellishment of the flagellar motor and its stator system type is described, motors with dual H+-dependent stator systems have one periplasmic ring formed by MotY.
Consideration of signal detection theory shows how decision ecology relates to optimal collective decisions, helping explain the prevalence of quorum-sensing in even the simplest collective systems, such as bacterial communities.
Genetic change among enzyme orthologous with similar phenotypic properties can cause substantial differences in evolutionary response to a new enzyme function in terms of their molecular and fitness outcomes.
Paul M Berube, Anna Rasmussen ... Sallie W Chisholm
In the context of an organism's ecology, physiology, and macroevolutionary history, inheritance and gene loss can yield emergent patterns of trait variability that give the appearance of gene acquisition.
A fatty acyl reductase gene family expansion in the Hymenoptera crown group led to recruitment of novel pheromone-biosynthetic enzymes and is linked to evolution of pheromone marking behavior.
UV-reflective dragonfly wax is shown to consist of very long-chain methyl ketones and aldehydes, and a synthetic dragonfly wax spontaneously forms light-scattering fine structures with strong UV reflection.
There is a strand-based evolutionary mechanism for the diversification of outer membrane proteins, which has implications for how repeat proteins are created and for how outer membrane proteins fold.
Pathogens, particularly viruses, target the same genes over deep evolutionary time, resulting in shared signatures of positive selection and transcriptional responses at the same genes.
Morphological and fitness defects imposed on amoebae hosts by Burkholderia symbionts demonstrates symbiont species-specific effects and provides evidence of host adaptation to naturally acquired symbionts.
