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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

The Roles Of Phenotypic Plasticity And Genotypic Specialization In High Altitude Adaptation, Danielle M. Tufts Dec 2013

The Roles Of Phenotypic Plasticity And Genotypic Specialization In High Altitude Adaptation, Danielle M. Tufts

School of Biological Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In vertebrates living at high altitude, arterial hypoxemia may be ameliorated by reversible changes in the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood (regulated by erythropoiesis) and/or changes in blood–oxygen affinity (regulated by allosteric effectors of hemoglobin function). These hematological traits often differ between taxa that are native to different elevational zones, but it is often unknown whether the observed physiological differences reflect fixed, genetically based differences or environmentally induced acclimatization responses (phenotypic plasticity). Here, we report measurements of hematological traits related to blood–O2 transport in populations of deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) that are native to high- and low-altitude …


Evolution Of The Pygmy Phenotype: Evidence Of Positive Selection From Genome-Wide Scans In African, Asian, And Melanesian Pygmies, Andrea Bamberg Migliano, Irene Gallego Romero, Mait Metspalu, Matthew Leavesley, Luca Pagani, Tiago Antao, Da-Wei Huang, Brad T. Sherman, Katharine Siddle, Clarissa Scholes, Georgi Hudjashov, Elton Kaitokai, Avis Babalu, Maggie Belatti, Alex Cagan, Bryony Hopkinshaw, Colin Shaw, Mari Nelis, Ene Metspalu, Reedik Mägi, Richard A. Lempicki, Richard Villems, Marta Mirazon Lahr, Toomis Kivisild Nov 2013

Evolution Of The Pygmy Phenotype: Evidence Of Positive Selection From Genome-Wide Scans In African, Asian, And Melanesian Pygmies, Andrea Bamberg Migliano, Irene Gallego Romero, Mait Metspalu, Matthew Leavesley, Luca Pagani, Tiago Antao, Da-Wei Huang, Brad T. Sherman, Katharine Siddle, Clarissa Scholes, Georgi Hudjashov, Elton Kaitokai, Avis Babalu, Maggie Belatti, Alex Cagan, Bryony Hopkinshaw, Colin Shaw, Mari Nelis, Ene Metspalu, Reedik Mägi, Richard A. Lempicki, Richard Villems, Marta Mirazon Lahr, Toomis Kivisild

Human Biology

Human pygmy populations inhabit different regions of the world, from Africa to Melanesia. In Asia, short-statured populations are often referred to as "negritos." Their short stature has been interpreted as a consequence of thermoregulatory, nutritional, and/or locomotory adaptations to life in tropical forests. A more recent hypothesis proposes that their stature is the outcome of a life history trade-off in high-mortality environments, where early reproduction is favored and, consequently, early sexual maturation and early growth cessation have coevolved. Some serological evidence of deficiencies in the growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor axis have been previously associated with pygmies’ short stature. Using genome-wide …


Functional Analysis Of Corazonin And Its Receptor In Drosophila Melanogaster, Kai Sha Aug 2013

Functional Analysis Of Corazonin And Its Receptor In Drosophila Melanogaster, Kai Sha

Doctoral Dissertations

Corazonin (Crz) is an amidated undecapeptide originally isolated from the American cockroach. It has been shown to affect diverse physiological functions in a species-specific manner. However, the functionality of Crz in Drosophila melanogaster has not yet been determined. To gain insight into the role of Crz signaling in vivo, Crz and CrzR null alleles were obtained by transposable element mobilization. Flies carrying a deficiency uncovering Crz and pr-set7 loci were generated via P-element excision, and the latter was rescued by wild-type pr-set7 transgene. A mutation of Crz receptor (CrzR) was generated by Minos-element mobilization from …


Phylogenetic Portrait Of The Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Functional Genome, Patrick A. Gibney, Mark J. Hickman, Patrick H. Bradley, John C. Matese, David Botstein Aug 2013

Phylogenetic Portrait Of The Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Functional Genome, Patrick A. Gibney, Mark J. Hickman, Patrick H. Bradley, John C. Matese, David Botstein

Faculty Scholarship for the College of Science & Mathematics

The genome of budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) contains approximately 5800 protein-encoding genes, the majority of which are associated with some known biological function. Yet the extent of amino acid sequence conservation of these genes over all phyla has only been partially examined. Here we provide a more comprehensive overview and visualization of the conservation of yeast genes and a means for browsing and exploring the data in detail, down to the individual yeast gene, at http://yeast-phylogroups.princeton.edu. We used data from the OrthoMCL database, which has defined orthologs from approximately 150 completely sequenced genomes, including diverse representatives of …


Science Fiction And The Myth Of Trajectory Evolution, Jocelyn D. Pickreign Jun 2013

Science Fiction And The Myth Of Trajectory Evolution, Jocelyn D. Pickreign

The Macalester Review

Stephen Jay Gould first proposed the idea of “iconographies of progress.” Today, one of the most prominent forms of progress iconography is the science fiction story. Science fiction as a genre frequently portrays evolution as a linear trajectory of increasing complexity, and in doing so, furthers a worldview that is not unlike the pre-Darwin understanding of human beings as both the center and the pinnacle of the natural world.


Tracing Evolutionary Footprints To Identify Novel Gene Functional Linkages., Yong Chen, Li Yang, Yunfeng Ding, Shuyan Zhang, Tong He, Fenglou Mao, Congyan Zhang, Huina Zhang, Chaoxing Huo, Pingsheng Liu Jan 2013

Tracing Evolutionary Footprints To Identify Novel Gene Functional Linkages., Yong Chen, Li Yang, Yunfeng Ding, Shuyan Zhang, Tong He, Fenglou Mao, Congyan Zhang, Huina Zhang, Chaoxing Huo, Pingsheng Liu

Faculty Scholarship for the College of Science & Mathematics

Systematic determination of gene function is an essential step in fully understanding the precise contribution of each gene for the proper execution of molecular functions in the cell. Gene functional linkage is defined as to describe the relationship of a group of genes with similar functions. With thousands of genomes sequenced, there arises a great opportunity to utilize gene evolutionary information to identify gene functional linkages. To this end, we established a computational method (called TRACE) to trace gene footprints through a gene functional network constructed from 341 prokaryotic genomes. TRACE performance was validated and successfully tested to predict enzyme …