September 2016 - 15 articles
Gene duplication followed by mutation is a classic mechanism of neofunctionalization, producing gene families with functional diversity. In some cases, a single point mutation is sufficient to change the substrate specificity and/or the chemistry per...
Increasing evidence suggests that bdelloid rotifers regularly undergo horizontal gene transfer, apparently as a surrogate mechanism of genetic exchange in the absence of true sexual reproduction, in part because of their ability to withstand desiccat...
Halophilic archaea experience high levels of ultraviolet (UV) light in their environments and demonstrate resistance to UV irradiation. DNA repair systems and carotenoids provide UV protection but do not account for the high resistance observed. Here...
Francis Crick (Figure 1) was born on 8 June 1916, in Northampton, England, and passed away on 28 July 2004, in La Jolla, California, USA.[...]
In recent years, biodiesel, a substitute for fossil fuels, has led to the excessive production of crude glycerol. The resulting crude glycerol can possess a high concentration of salts and an alkaline pH. Moreover, current crude glycerol purification...
Facts concerning the stability and functioning of key biomolecular components suggest that cellular life should no longer be viable above a few thousand atmospheres (200–300 MPa). However, organisms are seen to survive in the laboratory to much highe...
We propose that the first step in the origin of cellular life on Earth was the self-assembly of fatty acids with the building blocks of RNA and protein, resulting in a stable aggregate. This scheme provides explanations for the selection and concentr...
Gene duplication is an important mechanism of molecular evolution. It offers a fast track to modification, diversification, redundancy or rescue of gene function. However, duplication may also be neutral or (slightly) deleterious, and often ends in p...
The existence of multiple copies of genes is a well-known phenomenon. A gene family is a set of sufficiently similar genes, formed by gene duplication. In earlier works conducted on a limited number of completely sequenced and annotated genomes it wa...
Haloferax volcanii AglM and Halobacterium salinarum VNG1048G are UDP-glucose dehydrogenases involved in N-glycosylation in each species. Despite sharing >60% sequence identity and the ability of VNG1048G to functionally replace AglM in vivo, these...
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