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Why The Delay In Recognizing Terrestrial Obligate Cave Species In The Tropics?, Francis G. Howarth
Why The Delay In Recognizing Terrestrial Obligate Cave Species In The Tropics?, Francis G. Howarth
International Journal of Speleology
“Nothing could possibly live there!” They believed. Indeed, until recently, few specialized cave- adapted animals were known from volcanic, tropical, or oceanic island caves, and plausible theories had been put forward to explain their absence. But assume nothing in science! One must illuminate, explore, and survey habitats before declaring them barren. Our understanding of cave biology changed dramatically about 50 years ago following the serendipitous discovery of cave-adapted terrestrial arthropods in Brazil and on the young oceanic islands of the Galápagos and Hawai‘i. These discoveries and subsequent studies on the evolutionary ecology of cave animals have revealed a remarkable hidden …
Mixed Method Analysis Of Undergraduate Student Interpretation Of Different Phylogenetic Trees, Faith Frings
Mixed Method Analysis Of Undergraduate Student Interpretation Of Different Phylogenetic Trees, Faith Frings
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Phylogenetic trees are common tools used to visualize evolutionary concepts such as historical patterns of ancestry, divergence of species, and descent of species. However, students have misconceptions when reading these abstract diagrams. The purpose of this study was to compare student performance and evolutionary thinking when using two styles of phylogenetic trees: cladograms and phylograms. The study also assessed the validity of a hierarchal theoretical framework evaluating student phylogenetic tree interpretation. Introductory biology students from two research universities were assigned to two groups, one solely given assessments with phylograms, and one solely given assessments with cladograms. One-on-one student interviews were …
Evolution Of Targeted Therapy Resistance In Eml4-Alk Positive Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, Robert Vander Velde
Evolution Of Targeted Therapy Resistance In Eml4-Alk Positive Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, Robert Vander Velde
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Targeted therapies have emerged as potent treatments that lead to the remission of many tumors. However, they rarely cure cancers in advanced, metastatic settings. This is due to the evolution of resistance, which in turn can be ascribed to the survival of small subpopulations of tolerant and/or resistant cells. Here we investigated the evolution of resistance to EML4-ALK inhibitors in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and demonstrated that resistance evolves gradually, from unique pre-treatment sub-populations, as multiple resistance mechanisms accumulate in a Darwinian fashion. Despite accumulating multiple changes, cells evolved, in parallel, toward similar inhibitor specific phenotypes. Evolving cells have …
The Distribution In Native Populations From Mexico And Central America Of The C677t Variant In The Mthfr Gene, Lucio A. Reyes
The Distribution In Native Populations From Mexico And Central America Of The C677t Variant In The Mthfr Gene, Lucio A. Reyes
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Objectives: To explore evolutionary hypotheses for the high frequencies of a substitution in the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene, in Mexican and Central American Indigenous populations.
Materials and methods: We obtained allele frequencies for the C677T variant in the MTHFR gene and ecological information for 37 indigenous samples from Mexico and Central America. We calculated Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium and computed Fst statistics. We computed correlations between the samples' allele frequencies and ecological and geochemical variables.
Results: Many of the samples have extremely high frequencies of the T allele (q̄ = 0.62, median = 0.66). In this region, the frequency of the T …
Home-Field Advantage? Evidence Of Local Adaptation Among Plants, Soil, And Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Through Meta-Analysis, Megan A. Rúa, Anita Antoninka, Pedro M. Antunes, V Bala Chaudhary, Catherine Gehring, Louis J. Lamit, Bridget J. Piculell, James D. Bever, Cathy Zabinski, James F. Meadow, Marc J. Lajeunesse, Brook G. Milligan, Justine Karst, Jason D. Hoeksema
Home-Field Advantage? Evidence Of Local Adaptation Among Plants, Soil, And Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Through Meta-Analysis, Megan A. Rúa, Anita Antoninka, Pedro M. Antunes, V Bala Chaudhary, Catherine Gehring, Louis J. Lamit, Bridget J. Piculell, James D. Bever, Cathy Zabinski, James F. Meadow, Marc J. Lajeunesse, Brook G. Milligan, Justine Karst, Jason D. Hoeksema
Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications
BACKGROUND: Local adaptation, the differential success of genotypes in their native versus foreign environment, arises from various evolutionary processes, but the importance of concurrent abiotic and biotic factors as drivers of local adaptation has only recently been investigated. Local adaptation to biotic interactions may be particularly important for plants, as they associate with microbial symbionts that can significantly affect their fitness and may enable rapid evolution. The arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis is ideal for investigations of local adaptation because it is globally widespread among most plant taxa and can significantly affect plant growth and fitness. Using meta-analysis on 1170 studies …
Life In The Underworld: Anchialine Cave Biology In The Era Of Speleogenomics, Jorge L. Pérez-Moreno, Thomas M. Iliffe, Heather D. Bracken-Grissom
Life In The Underworld: Anchialine Cave Biology In The Era Of Speleogenomics, Jorge L. Pérez-Moreno, Thomas M. Iliffe, Heather D. Bracken-Grissom
International Journal of Speleology
Anchialine caves contain haline bodies of water with underground connections to the ocean and limited exposure to open air. Despite being found on islands and peninsular coastlines around the world, the isolation of anchialine systems has facilitated the evolution of high levels of endemism among their inhabitants. The unique characteristics of anchialine caves and of their predominantly crustacean biodiversity nominate them as particularly interesting study subjects for evolutionary biology. However, there is presently a distinct scarcity of modern molecular methods being employed in the study of anchialine cave ecosystems. The use of current and emerging molecular techniques, e.g., next-generation sequencing …
Structure, Dynamics, And Evolution Of The Intrinsically Disordered P53 Transactivation Domain, Wade Michael Borcherds
Structure, Dynamics, And Evolution Of The Intrinsically Disordered P53 Transactivation Domain, Wade Michael Borcherds
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
in numerous disease states, including cancers and neurodegenerative diseases. All proteins are dynamic in nature, occupying a range of conformational flexibilities. This inherent flexibility is required for their function, with ordered proteins and IDPs representing the least flexible, and most flexible, respectively. As such IDPs possess little to no stable tertiary or secondary structure, they instead form broad ensembles of heterogeneous structures, which fluctuate over multiple time scales. Although IDPs often lack stable secondary structure they can assume a more stable structure in the presence of their binding partners in a coupled folding binding reaction.
The phenomenon of the dynamic …
Complete Genome Sequences And Phylogeny Of West Nile Virus Isolates From Southeastern United States, 2003-2012, Crystal Wedin
Complete Genome Sequences And Phylogeny Of West Nile Virus Isolates From Southeastern United States, 2003-2012, Crystal Wedin
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The study of the evolution and phylogeny of West Nile virus (WNV) has been an important area of research since the introduction of WNV in 1999. However, genome sequencing of isolates from the Southeastern part of the United States has been somewhat limited. To determine how WNV has evolved at a more localized level, ten isolates from Florida and Georgia from 2003-2012 were completely sequenced using Illumina's next-generation technology. In addition, a phylogenetic comparison of both the complete genome and select partial genomes was completed to ensure consistency among the results. This study further demonstrated the dominance of the North …
Paleobiological Assessment Of Controls Underlying Long-Term Diversity Dynamics, Andrés L. Cárdenas
Paleobiological Assessment Of Controls Underlying Long-Term Diversity Dynamics, Andrés L. Cárdenas
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Deciphering the factors underlying both long-term patterns of diversity and taxonomic turnover rates (i.e., extinction, and origination) has been one of Paleobiology's major foci for the past three decades. The importance of documenting these components is that they will expand our ability to interpret and model the evolutionary processes underlying those trends, highlight the evolutionary impact of historical events, and contribute to the formulation of robust predictions about the future of global diversity in response to the current anthropologically driven environmental changes. Accordingly, the first part of this study examines the possible occurrence of global marine evolutionary environmental controls into …
Comparing Models Of Evolution For Ordered And Disordered Proteins, Celeste J. Brown, Audra K. Johnson, Gary W. Daughdrill
Comparing Models Of Evolution For Ordered And Disordered Proteins, Celeste J. Brown, Audra K. Johnson, Gary W. Daughdrill
Molecular Biosciences Faculty Publications
Most models of protein evolution are based upon proteins that form relatively rigid 3D structures. A significant fraction of proteins, the so-called disordered proteins, do not form rigid 3D structures and sample a broad conformational ensemble. Disordered proteins do not typically maintain long-range interactions, so the constraints on their evolution should be different than ordered proteins. To test this hypothesis, we developed and compared models of evolution for disordered and ordered proteins. Substitution matrices were constructed using the sequences of putative homologs for sets of experimentally characterized disordered and ordered proteins. Separate matrices, at three levels of sequence similarity ( …