Dave W Anderson, Alesia N McKeown, Joseph W Thornton
Experimental mapping of the joint sequence space of an ancient transcription factor (TF) and its DNA binding sites reveals that epistasis across the molecular interface permitted the evolution of a new and specific TF-DNA complex.
In-lab evolution of synthetic promoters has revealed a novel general mechanism for de novo evolution of gene regulation, and highlights the crucial role of expression noise in this process.
Glen Wheeler, Takahiro Ishikawa ... Nicholas Smirnoff
Genomic evidence suggests that L-gulonolactone oxidase-the terminal enzyme in vitamin C synthesis, which has been repeatedly lost throughout animal evolution-was lost in plants and other photosynthetic eukaryotes following plastid acquisition.
Studies of the house mouse Mus musculus have provided important insights into mammalian biology, and efforts to study wild house mice and to create new inbred strains from wild populations have the potential to increase its usefulness as a model system.
The discovery of the earliest direct evidence of brood care in insects demonstrates a remarkably conserved egg-brooding reproductive strategy within scale insects in stasis for nearly 100 million years.
To leverage the tools, resources and knowledge that exist for C. elegans so that we can study ecology, evolution and other aspects of biology, we need to understand the natural history of this important model organism.
A better understanding of the natural history of model organisms will increase their value as model systems and also keep them at the forefront of research.
