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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Transcriptomics Of Learning, Pablo Iturralde
Transcriptomics Of Learning, Pablo Iturralde
Theses
Learning is a basic and important component of behavior yet we have very little empirical information about the interaction between mechanisms of learning and evolution. In our work, we are testing hypotheses about the neurogenetic mechanisms through which animal learning abilities evolve. We are able to test this directly by using experimentally evolved populations of flies, which differ in learning ability. These populations were previously evolved within the lab by creating worlds with different patterns of change following theoretically predicted effects on which enhanced learning will evolve. How has evolution acted to modulate genes and gene expression in the brain …
Efficient Reduced Bias Genetic Algorithm For Generic Community Detection Objectives, Aditya Karnam Gururaj Rao
Efficient Reduced Bias Genetic Algorithm For Generic Community Detection Objectives, Aditya Karnam Gururaj Rao
Theses
The problem of community structure identification has been an extensively investigated area for biology, physics, social sciences, and computer science in recent years for studying the properties of networks representing complex relationships. Most traditional methods, such as K-means and hierarchical clustering, are based on the assumption that communities have spherical configurations. Lately, Genetic Algorithms (GA) are being utilized for efficient community detection without imposing sphericity. GAs are machine learning methods which mimic natural selection and scale with the complexity of the network. However, traditional GA approaches employ a representation method that dramatically increases the solution space to be searched by …
The Ecology And Feeding Behavior Of Mosquitoes In The Galapagos Islands, Samoa S. Asigau
The Ecology And Feeding Behavior Of Mosquitoes In The Galapagos Islands, Samoa S. Asigau
Dissertations
Mosquitoes remain important vectors in transmitting wildlife diseases. This dissertation aims to understand the role that mosquitoes play in transmitting wildlife diseases such as avian malaria, a protozoan parasite belonging to the genus Plasmodium. Using data from wild-caught mosquitoes captured in multiple years and across multiple islands on the Galapagos Archipelago, we describe distributional patterns of mosquitoes, their range limits and assess whether there exists a disease-free refuge as occurs in Hawaii. We show that altitudinal ranges for disease transmission of avian malaria may not be bounded by a stable disease-free refuge, since mosquitoes are found at all elevations, …
Landscape Genomics: Natural Selection Drives The Evolution Of Mitogenome In Penguins, Barbara Ramos, Daniel González-Acuña, David Loyola, Warren Johnson, Patricia Parker, Melanie Massaro, Gisele Dantas, Marcelo Miranda, Juliana Vianna
Landscape Genomics: Natural Selection Drives The Evolution Of Mitogenome In Penguins, Barbara Ramos, Daniel González-Acuña, David Loyola, Warren Johnson, Patricia Parker, Melanie Massaro, Gisele Dantas, Marcelo Miranda, Juliana Vianna
Biology Department Faculty Works
BackgroundMitochondria play a key role in the balance of energy and heat production, and therefore the mitochondrial genome is under natural selection by environmental temperature and food availability, since starvation can generate more efficient coupling of energy production. However, selection over mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genes has usually been evaluated at the population level. We sequenced by NGS 12 mitogenomes and with four published genomes, assessed genetic variation in ten penguin species distributed from the equator to Antarctica. Signatures of selection of 13 mitochondrial protein-coding genes were evaluated by comparing among species within and among genera (Spheniscus, Pygoscelis, Eudyptula, Eudyptes and …