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Mechanisms Of Action And Co-Optive Evolution For Hypervariable Courtship Pheromones In Plethodontid Salamanders., Wilburn Beau Wilburn
Mechanisms Of Action And Co-Optive Evolution For Hypervariable Courtship Pheromones In Plethodontid Salamanders., Wilburn Beau Wilburn
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Pheromones are an important type of chemical cue used by most animals to convey information between individuals. For more than 100 million years, male plethodontid salamanders have utilized a system of non-volatile, proteinaceous pheromones to regulate female mating behavior and receptivity. One of these pheromone components, Plethodontid Modulating Factor (PMF), is a hypervariable protein related to the three-finger protein (TFP) superfamily. Previous studies revealed that PMF persists as a rapidly evolving multi-isoform mixture. However, many characteristics of PMF as a pheromone remained undetermined, including gene structure and transcriptional regulation, translational regulation, protein structure, evolutionary mechanisms, and the isoform effects on …