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Full-Text Articles in Biology
Evolution Of Bidirectional Costly Mutualism From Byproduct Consumption, Lon Chubiz, William Harcombe, Jeremy Chacón, Elizabeth Adamowicz, Christopher Marx
Evolution Of Bidirectional Costly Mutualism From Byproduct Consumption, Lon Chubiz, William Harcombe, Jeremy Chacón, Elizabeth Adamowicz, Christopher Marx
Biology Department Faculty Works
Mutualisms are essential for life, yet it is unclear how they arise. A two-stage process has been proposed for the evolution of mutualisms that involve exchanges of two costly resources. First, costly provisioning by one species may be selected for if that species gains a benefit from costless byproducts generated by a second species, and cooperators get disproportionate access to byproducts. Selection could then drive the second species to provide costly resources in return. Previously, a synthetic consortium evolved the first stage of this scenario: Salmonella enterica evolved costly production of methionine in exchange for costless carbon byproducts generated by …
Multiple Puf Proteins Regulate The Stability Of Ribosome Biogenesis Transcripts, Anthony Fischer, Wendy Olivas
Multiple Puf Proteins Regulate The Stability Of Ribosome Biogenesis Transcripts, Anthony Fischer, Wendy Olivas
Biology Department Faculty Works
Cells must make careful use of the resources available to them. A key area of cellular regulation involves the biogenesis of ribosomes. Transcriptional regulation of ribosome biogenesis factor genes through alterations in histone acetylation has been well studied. This work identifies a post-transcriptional mechanism of ribosome biogenesis regulation by Puf protein control of mRNA stability. Puf proteins are eukaryotic mRNA binding proteins that play regulatory roles in mRNA degradation and translation via association with specific conserved elements in the 3ʹ untranslated region (UTR) of target mRNAs and with degradation and translation factors. We demonstrate that several ribosome biogenesis factor mRNAs …
Trade-Offs Between Growth, Reproduction And Defense In Response To Resource Availability Manipulations, Robert Marquis, Juliana Tuller, Samara Andrade, Angelo Monteiro, Lucas Faria
Trade-Offs Between Growth, Reproduction And Defense In Response To Resource Availability Manipulations, Robert Marquis, Juliana Tuller, Samara Andrade, Angelo Monteiro, Lucas Faria
Biology Department Faculty Works
The Brazilian Cerrado is one of the most endangered biomes in the world. We evaluated the sustainability of leaf harvest in one of the most important Cerrado tree species, Stryphnodendron adstringens. The bark of this tree is used as a source of medicinal tannin. Harvesting bark, however, often kills the tree. In a manipulative field experiment, we tested the hypothesis that harvesting leaves, which might serve as an alternative source of tannin, would be less detrimental for tree survival, growth, reproduction, and defense than harvesting bark. In a two-way crossed experimental design, we either clipped 100% of a plant’s leaves …
Haemosporidian Parasite Community In Migrating Bobolinks On The Galapagos Islands, Patricia Parker, Noah Perlut, Rosalind Renfrew, Maricruz Jaramillo
Haemosporidian Parasite Community In Migrating Bobolinks On The Galapagos Islands, Patricia Parker, Noah Perlut, Rosalind Renfrew, Maricruz Jaramillo
Biology Department Faculty Works
Bobolinks (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) migrate from their breeding grounds in North America to their wintering grounds in South America during the fall each year. A small number of Bobolinks stop temporarily in Galapagos, and potentially carry parasites. On the North American breeding grounds, Bobolinks carry a least two of the four Plasmodium lineages recently detected in resident Galapagos birds. We hypothesized that Bobolinks carried these parasites to Galapagos, where they were bitten by mosquitoes that then transmitted the parasites to resident birds. The haemosporidian parasite community in 44% of the Bobolinks we captured was consistent with those on their breeding grounds. …
Predator-By-Environment Interactions Mediate Bacterial Competition In The Dictyostelium Discoideum Microbiome, Fredrik Inglis, Odion Asikhia, Erica Ryu, David Queller, Joan Strassmann
Predator-By-Environment Interactions Mediate Bacterial Competition In The Dictyostelium Discoideum Microbiome, Fredrik Inglis, Odion Asikhia, Erica Ryu, David Queller, Joan Strassmann
Biology Department Faculty Works
Interactions between species and their environment play a key role in the evolution of diverse communities, and numerous studies have emphasized that interactions among microbes and among trophic levels play an important role in maintaining microbial diversity and ecosystem functioning. In this study, we investigate how two of these types of interactions, public goods cooperation through the production of iron scavenging siderophores and predation by the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, mediate competition between two strains of Pseudomonas fluorescens that were co-isolated from D. discoideum. We find that although we are able to generally predict the competitive outcomes between strains based …
A Pex1 Missense Mutation Improves Peroxisome Function In A Subset Of Arabidopsis Pex6 Mutants Without Restoring Pex5 Recycling, Bethany Zolman, Kim Gonzalez, Sarah Ratzel, Kendall Burks, Charles Danan, Jeanne Wages, Bonnie Bartel
A Pex1 Missense Mutation Improves Peroxisome Function In A Subset Of Arabidopsis Pex6 Mutants Without Restoring Pex5 Recycling, Bethany Zolman, Kim Gonzalez, Sarah Ratzel, Kendall Burks, Charles Danan, Jeanne Wages, Bonnie Bartel
Biology Department Faculty Works
Peroxisomes are eukaryotic organelles critical for plant and human development because they house essential metabolic functions, such as fatty acid β-oxidation. The interacting ATPases PEX1 and PEX6 contribute to peroxisome function by recycling PEX5, a cytosolic receptor needed to import proteins targeted to the peroxisomal matrix. Arabidopsis pex6 mutants exhibit low PEX5 levels and defects in peroxisomal matrix protein import, oil body utilization, peroxisomal metabolism, and seedling growth. These defects are hypothesized to stem from impaired PEX5 retrotranslocation leading to PEX5 polyubiquitination and consequent degradation of PEX5 via the proteasome or of the entire organelle via autophagy. We recovered a …
Host Species, And Not Environment, Predicts Variation In Blood Parasite Prevalence, Distribution, And Diversity Along A Humidity Gradient In Northern South America, Robert Ricklefs, Paulo Pulgarín‐R, Juan Gómez
Host Species, And Not Environment, Predicts Variation In Blood Parasite Prevalence, Distribution, And Diversity Along A Humidity Gradient In Northern South America, Robert Ricklefs, Paulo Pulgarín‐R, Juan Gómez
Biology Department Faculty Works
Environmental factors strongly influence the ecology and evolution of vector‐borne infectious diseases. However, our understanding of the influence of climatic variation on host–parasite interactions in tropical systems is rudimentary. We studied five species of birds and their haemosporidian parasites (Plasmodium and Haemoproteus) at 16 sampling sites to understand how environmental heterogeneity influences patterns of parasite prevalence, distribution, and diversity across a marked gradient in water availability in northern South America. We used molecular methods to screen for parasite infections and to identify parasite lineages. To characterize spatial heterogeneity in water availability, we used weather‐station and remotely sensed climate data. We …
Mode And Rate Of Evolution Of Haemosporidian Mitochondrial Genomes: Timing The Radiation Of Avian Parasites, Patricia Parker, M Pacheco, Nubia Matta, Gediminas Valkiūnas, Beatriz Mello, Craig Stanley, Miguel Lentino, Maria Garcia-Amado, Michael Cranfield, Sergei Pond, Ananias Escalante
Mode And Rate Of Evolution Of Haemosporidian Mitochondrial Genomes: Timing The Radiation Of Avian Parasites, Patricia Parker, M Pacheco, Nubia Matta, Gediminas Valkiūnas, Beatriz Mello, Craig Stanley, Miguel Lentino, Maria Garcia-Amado, Michael Cranfield, Sergei Pond, Ananias Escalante
Biology Department Faculty Works
Haemosporidians are a diverse group of vector-borne parasitic protozoa that includes the agents of human malaria; however, most of the described species are found in birds and reptiles. Although our understanding of these parasites’ diversity has expanded by analyses of their mitochondrial genes, there is limited information on these genes’ evolutionary rates. Here, 114 mitochondrial genomes (mtDNA) were studied from species belonging to four genera: Leucocytozoon, Haemoproteus, Hepatocystis, and Plasmodium. Contrary to previous assertions, the mtDNA is phylogenetically informative. The inferred phylogeny showed that, like the genus Plasmodium, the Leucocytozoon and Haemoproteus genera are not monophyletic groups. Although sensitive to …
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 …