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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

(Non)Parallel Developmental Mechanisms In Vertebrate Appendage Reduction And Loss, Samantha Swank, Thomas Sanger, Yoel E. Stuart Nov 2021

(Non)Parallel Developmental Mechanisms In Vertebrate Appendage Reduction And Loss, Samantha Swank, Thomas Sanger, Yoel E. Stuart

Biology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Appendages have been reduced or lost hundreds of times during vertebrate evolution. This phenotypic convergence may be underlain by shared or different molecular mechanisms in distantly related vertebrate clades. To investigate, we reviewed the developmental and evolutionary literature of appendage reduction and loss in more than a dozen vertebrate genera from fish to mammals. We found that appendage reduction and loss was nearly always driven by modified gene expression as opposed to changes in coding sequences. Moreover, expression of the same genes was repeatedly modified across vertebrate taxa. However, the specific mechanisms by which expression was modified were rarely shared. …


Insights Into The Molecular Evolution Of Fertilization Mechanism In Land Plants, Vijyesh Sharma, Anthony J. Clark, Tomokazu Kawashima Jun 2021

Insights Into The Molecular Evolution Of Fertilization Mechanism In Land Plants, Vijyesh Sharma, Anthony J. Clark, Tomokazu Kawashima

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Land plants have evolved successive changes during their conquest of the land and innovations in sexual reproduction have played a major role in their terrestrialization. Recent years have seen many revealing dissections of the molecular mechanisms of sexual reproduction and much new genomics data from the land plant lineage, including early diverging land plants, as well as algae. This new knowledge is being integrated to further understand how sexual reproduction in land plants evolved, identifying highly conserved factors and pathways, but also molecular changes that underpinned the emergence of new modes of sexual reproduction. Here, we review recent advances in …


Zebrafish (Danio Rerio) Hoxb6: An Exploration Into The Divergence Of Genomic Dna Sequence And Gene Expression Across Teleost Fishes Post-Genome Duplication, Amber Lynn Rittgers, Pierre Le Pabic, Adam Davis Apr 2021

Zebrafish (Danio Rerio) Hoxb6: An Exploration Into The Divergence Of Genomic Dna Sequence And Gene Expression Across Teleost Fishes Post-Genome Duplication, Amber Lynn Rittgers, Pierre Le Pabic, Adam Davis

Georgia Journal of Science

Hoxb6 is an evolutionarily conserved developmental regulatory gene that functions, in part, to pattern several organs and organ systems within the embryonic trunk during vertebrate embryogenesis. The cis-regulatory circuitry mediating trunk expression in mouse (Mus musculus) may be conserved across gnathostome vertebrates, as several other species show similar trunk expression patterns, including chicken (Gallus gallus), dogfish shark (Scyliorhinus canicula), and several teleost fishes. A whole genome duplication event that occurred in the lineage leading to teleost fishes has generated at least two Hoxb6 genes, hoxb6a and b6b. Two teleost fishes of the …


The Phoenix, Fernanda Perez-Alvarez Apr 2021

The Phoenix, Fernanda Perez-Alvarez

Montserrat Annual Writing Prize

This article uses a mythical creature, the phoenix, to examine and illustrate the biological principles for generation of an adult body plan from a single cell. Using the study of developmental biology, it explores the cellular and molecular biology that underpins the massive complexity of creating an adult body plan. It also explores the similarities and differences between different embryos, and how nature and evolution have shaped the biology of those embryos to create different body plans.


Larval Anatomy Of Monotypic Painted Ant Nest Frogs Lithodytes Lineatus Reveals Putative Homoplasies With The Leptodactylus Pentadactylus Group (Anura: Leptodactylidae), Filipe A.C Do Nascimento, Rafael O. De Sá, Paulo C. De A. Garcia Jan 2021

Larval Anatomy Of Monotypic Painted Ant Nest Frogs Lithodytes Lineatus Reveals Putative Homoplasies With The Leptodactylus Pentadactylus Group (Anura: Leptodactylidae), Filipe A.C Do Nascimento, Rafael O. De Sá, Paulo C. De A. Garcia

Biology Faculty Publications

The morphological diversity of anuran larvae made them an important source of information for evolutionary and systematic studies. For the monotypic frog genus Lithodytes, which has an interesting taxonomic history, including its past synonymizing with Adenomera and its placement as a subgenus of Leptodactylus, the information provided from its larvae can help to understand its systematics interrelationships and also provide insights about its evolutionary trajectories. Herein, we provide a detailed description of the larval morphology of Lithodytes lineatus, including novel data of internal morphology (buccopharyngeal cavity and skeleton), and discuss some morphological and evolutionary aspects in relation …


Functional Genetic Approaches To Provide Evidence For The Role Of Toolkit Genes In The Evolution Of Complex Color Patterns In Drosophila Guttifera, Mujeeb Olushola Shittu Jan 2021

Functional Genetic Approaches To Provide Evidence For The Role Of Toolkit Genes In The Evolution Of Complex Color Patterns In Drosophila Guttifera, Mujeeb Olushola Shittu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Toolkit genes are set of genes that orchestrate the development of basic body plan of animals, and they are highly conserved in all animals. The co-option of the toolkit genes into the pigmentation pathway has led to the evolution of novel species. This study focuses on understanding how the complex color patterns in animals develop by using the Drosophila species in the quinaria group as models. We developed an mRNA in situ hybridization (ISH) protocol, which allowed us to study gene expression patterns in the abdomen of developing pupae of non-model Drosophila species (Chapter 2). Through ISH, we found that …


The Origin Of Novel Trait Inferred From Transcriptomic Analysis And A Targeted Gene Approach In The Beetle Horns., Naureen Fatima Jan 2021

The Origin Of Novel Trait Inferred From Transcriptomic Analysis And A Targeted Gene Approach In The Beetle Horns., Naureen Fatima

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The origin of the evolutionary new trait (evolutionary novelty) and its subsequent evolution is of great interest for biologists in various fields, and beetle horns have been used to address this fundamental biological question. Previous studies on one of the horned beetle species, Onthophagus taurus, that utilized comparative gene expression analyses, suggested legs to be a strong candidate of the origin of horns. At the same time, their horns are secondary sexual traits whose development is regulated by the same gene (doublesex) as genitalia, which also originates from paired appendages such as legs. However, little is known …