2018 June - 45 articles
Although Yersinia enterocolitica genomes are highly heterogeneous, they contain a conserved N-acylhomoserine lactone-dependent (AHL) quorum sensing (QS) system consisting of the luxR and luxI orthologs yenR and yenI respectively. Certain hypervirulen...
The genome of a red fox (Vulpes vulpes) was recently sequenced and assembled using next-generation sequencing (NGS). The assembly is of high quality, with 94X coverage and a scaffold N50 of 11.8 Mbp, but is split into 676,878 scaffolds, some of which...
Plants are sessile organisms and, in order to defend themselves against exogenous (a)biotic constraints, they synthesize an array of secondary metabolites which have important physiological and ecological effects. Plant secondary metabolites can be c...
H1 linker histones are a class of DNA-binding proteins involved in the formation of supra-nucleosomal chromatin higher order structures. Eleven non-allelic subtypes of H1 are known in mammals, seven of which are expressed in somatic cells, while four...
Increasing evidence shows that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in developmental regulation and many other biological processes in plants. However, identification of lncRNAs in Pyrus betulifolia is limited compared with studies of f...
There are differences in number and localization of nucleolus organizer regions (NORs) in genomes. In mammalian genomes, NORs are located on autosomes, which are often situated on short arms of acrocentric chromosomes and more rarely in telomeric, pe...
With the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing technology, the analysis of metagenomic sequencing data and the accurate and efficient estimation of relative microbial abundance have become important ways to explore the microbial composition...
Calcium ion (Ca2+) serves as a second messenger for a variety of cell functions in trypanosomes. Several proteins in the plasma membrane, acidocalcisomes, endoplasmic reticulum, and mitochondria are involved in its homeostasis and in cell signaling r...
microRNA (miRNA) activity and regulation are of increasing interest as new therapeutic targets. Traditional approaches to assess miRNA levels in cells rely on RNA sequencing or quantitative PCR. While useful, these approaches are based on RNA extract...
In addition to its wide geographical distribution, osteoglossiform fishes represent one of the most ancient freshwater teleost lineages; making it an important group for systematic and evolutionary studies. These fishes had a Gondwanan origin and the...
Mounting evidence suggests that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in the regulation of gene expression by acting as competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA). However, the regulatory mechanisms of lncRNA as ceRNA in gastric cancer (GC) are no...
Feature selection, which identifies a set of most informative features from the original feature space, has been widely used to simplify the predictor. Recursive feature elimination (RFE), as one of the most popular feature selection approaches, is e...
The ability to form an intramolecular structure plays a fundamental role in eukaryotic RNA biogenesis. Proximate regions in the primary transcripts fold into a local secondary structure, which is then hierarchically assembled into a tertiary structur...
High-throughput structure profiling (SP) experiments that provide information at nucleotide resolution are revolutionizing our ability to study RNA structures. Of particular interest are RNA elements whose underlying structures are necessary for thei...
Previous studies suggest that signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and CCAAT/enhancer binding protein beta (C/EBPβ) play an essential role in ovarian granulosa cells (GCs) for mammalian follicular development. Several C/EBP...
Zero-growth processes are a promising strategy for the production of reduced molecules and depict a steady transition from aerobic to anaerobic conditions. To investigate the adaptation of Corynebacterium glutamicum to altering oxygen availabilities,...
During CRISPR/Cas9 mediated genome editing, site-specific double strand breaks are introduced and repaired either unspecific by non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) or sequence dependent by homology directed repair (HDR). Whereas NHEJ-based generation o...
Adaptation to a local environment often occurs in the face of maladaptive gene flow. In this perspective, I discuss several ideas on how a genome may respond to maladaptive gene flow during adaptation. On the one hand, selection can build clusters of...
Due to its extraordinary longevity and wide distribution, the ocean quahog Arctica islandica has become an important species model in both aging and environmental change research. Notwithstanding that, most genetic studies on ocean quahogs have been...
Acute hepatitis B infection (AHB) is still a common viral acute hepatitis worldwide. As vaccination, antiviral treatment, and immigration are bound to affect the epidemiological landscape of HBV infections, and some of its aspects need to be investig...
Sex-biased genes are central to the study of sexual selection, sexual antagonism, and sex chromosome evolution. We describe a comprehensive de novo assembled transcriptome in the common frog Rana temporaria based on five developmental stages and thre...
Panicle architecture and grain size are two important agronomic traits which determine grain yield directly in rice. In the present study, a mutant named ltbsg1 (longer top branch and shorter grain 1) was isolated from the cultivar “Zhenong 34&...
In animals, sexual differences between males and females are usually determined by sex chromosomes. Alternatively, sex may also be determined by vertically transmitted intracellular microbial endosymbionts. The best known cytoplasmic sex manipulative...
The recent resurgence of yellow fever virus (YFV) activity in the tropical regions of Africa and South America has sparked renewed interest in this infamous arboviral disease. Yellow fever virus had been a human plague for centuries prior to the iden...
Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is usually associated with a CGG repeat expansion >200 repeats within the FMR1 gene, known as a full mutation (FM). FM alleles produce abnormal methylation of the FMR1 promoter with reduction or silencing of FMR1 gene expr...
Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) is a complex genetic disorder that, besides cognitive impairments, is characterized by hyperphagia, obesity, hypogonadism, and growth impairment. Proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 1 (PCSK1) deficiency, a ra...
Vertebrate organs develop through a complex process which involves interaction between multiple signaling pathways at the molecular, cell, and tissue levels. Heart development is an example of such complex process which, when disrupted, results in co...
Transposable elements of the hAT family exhibit a cross-kingdom distribution. The plant hAT transposons are proposed to play a critical role in plant adaptive evolution and DNA damage repair. The sequencing of an increasing number of plant genomes ha...
Understanding the mechanisms that govern nervous tissues function remains a challenge. In vitro two-dimensional (2D) cell culture systems provide a simplistic platform to evaluate systematic investigations but often result in unreliable responses tha...
Three types of sex chromosome system exist in nature: diploid XY and ZW systems and haploid UV systems. For many years, research has focused exclusively on XY and ZW systems, leaving UV chromosomes and haploid sex determination largely neglected. Her...
Recently, microfluidic technologies have attracted an enormous amount of interest as potential new tools for a large range of applications including materials synthesis, chemical and biological detection, drug delivery and screening, point-of-care di...
In this paper, we present a two-phase microfluidic system capable of incubating and quantifying microbead-based agglutination assays. The microfluidic system is based on a simple fabrication solution, which requires only laboratory tubing filled with...
Previous phylogenetic analyses of the Chinese sisorid catfishes have either been poorly resolved or have not included all the 12 sisorid genera. Here, we successfully assembled the first complete mitochondrial genome of the sisorid fish Glyptothorax ...
The magpie moth, Abraxas grossulariata, is an iconic species in which female heterogamety was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century. However, the sex chromosomes of this species have not yet been cytologically identified. We describe the se...
Identifying the genetic basis underlying phenotypic divergence and reproductive isolation is a longstanding problem in evolutionary biology. Genetic signals of adaptation and reproductive isolation are often confounded by a wide range of factors, suc...
Regulons, which serve as co-regulated gene groups contributing to the transcriptional regulation of microbial genomes, have the potential to aid in understanding of underlying regulatory mechanisms. In this study, we designed a novel computational pi...
Probiotics are well known for their beneficial effects for animals, including humans and livestock. Here, we tested the probiotic activity of Lactobacillus paracasei expressing 3D8 scFv, a nucleic acid-hydrolyzing mini-antibody, in mice intestine. A...
Dioecious plants vary in whether their sex chromosomes are heteromorphic or homomorphic, but even homomorphic sex chromosomes may show divergence between homologues in the non-recombining, sex-determining region (SDR). Very little is known about the...
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the most common progressive neurodegenerative diseases. Clinical and epidemiological studies indicate that sex differences, as well as genetic components and ageing, can influence the prevalence, age at onset...
The Y chromosome in mammals is variable, even in closely related species. Middle East blind mole rats Nannospalax ehrenbergi demonstrate autosomal variability, which probably leads to speciation. Here, we compare the mitotic and meiotic chromosomes o...
Xyloglucan endotransglucosylase/hydrolase genes (XTHs) encode enzymes required for the reconstruction and modification of xyloglucan backbones, which will result in changes of cell wall extensibility during growth. A total of 56 NtXTH genes were iden...
During speciation-with-gene-flow, a transition from single-locus to multi-locus processes can occur, as strong coupling of multiple loci creates a barrier to gene flow. Testing predictions about such transitions with empirical data requires building...
B chromosomes (Bs) are supernumerary elements found in many taxonomic groups. Most B chromosomes are rich in heterochromatin and composed of abundant repetitive sequences, especially transposable elements (TEs). B origin is generally linked to the A-...
In Metazoans, transcription of most genes is driven by the use of multiple alternative promoters. Although the precise regulation of alternative promoters is important for proper gene expression, the mechanisms that mediates their differential utiliz...
Chronic periodontitis is the most prevalent form of inflammatory destructive bone disease and has been affecting humans since antiquity. Evidence suggest that genetic factors can highly influence periodontitis risk, modulating disease elements such a...
