2013 March - 22 articles
Intertidal wetlands are recognised for the provision of a range of valued ecosystem services. The two major categories of intertidal wetlands discussed in this contribution are saltmarshes and mangrove forests. Intertidal wetlands are under threat fr...
Insertion/deletion (indel) mutations, which are represented by gaps in multiple sequence alignments, have been used to examine phylogenetic hypotheses for some time. However, most analyses combine gap data with the nucleotide sequences in which they...
The Class Amphibia is one of the most severely impacted taxa in an on-going global biodiversity crisis. Because amphibian reproduction is tightly associated with the presence of water, climatic changes that affect water availability pose a particular...
Within just a few years, the new methods for high-throughput next-generation sequencing have generated completely novel insights into the heritability and pathophysiology of human disease. In this review, we wish to highlight the benefits of the curr...
Almost all transfection protocols for mammalian cells use a drug resistance gene for the selection of transfected cells. However, it always requires the characterization of each isolated clone regarding transgene expression, which is time-consuming a...
Climate change is already altering the landscape at high latitudes. Permafrost is thawing, the growing season is starting earlier, and, as a result, certain regions in the Arctic may be subjected to an increased incidence of freeze-thaw events. The p...
The discovery of extensive and complex hypolithic communities in both cold and hot deserts has raised many questions regarding their ecology, biodiversity and relevance in terms of regional productivity. However, most hypolithic research has focused...
The Arctic environment is undergoing changes due to climate shifts, receiving contaminants from distant sources and experiencing increased human activity. Climate change may alter microbial functioning by increasing growth rates and substrate use due...
Hepatitis C virus (HCV), a hepatotropic virus, is a single stranded-positive RNA virus of ~9,600 nt. length belonging to the Flaviviridae family. HCV infection causes acute hepatitis, chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). I...
Transcriptional regulation of genes involved in fatty acid metabolism is considered the major long-term regulatory mechanism controlling lipid homeostasis. By means of this mechanism, transcription factors, nutrients, hormones and epigenetics control...
Lake Vanda is a perennially ice-covered, closed-basin lake in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. Laminated photosynthetic microbial mats cover the floor of the lake from below the ice cover to >40 m depth. In recent decades, the water level of L...
An Antarctic soil metagenomic library was screened for lipolytic enzymes and allowed for the isolation of a new cytosolic esterase from the a/b hydrolase family 6, named MHlip. This enzyme is related to hypothetical genes coding esterases, aryl-ester...
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNA molecules of 21–23 nucleotides that control gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. They have been shown to play a vital role in a wide variety of biological processes and dysregulated expression...
Ice deposited in Greenland and Antarctica entraps viable and nonviable microbes, as well as biomolecules, that become temporal atmospheric records. Five sections (estimated to be 500, 10,500, 57,000, 105,000 and 157,000 years before present, ybp) fr...
The Natural resistance-associated macrophage protein 1 (Nramp1 or Solute carrier 11 member 1, Slc11a1) transports divalent metals across the membrane of late endosomes and lysosomes in professional phagocytes. Nramp1 represents an ancient eukaryotic...
PRDM (PRDI-BF1 and RIZ homology domain containing) protein family members are characterized by the presence of a PR domain and a variable number of Zn-finger repeats. Experimental evidence has shown that the PRDM proteins play an important role in g...
Three psychrophilic protein pheromones (En-1, En-2 and En-6) from the polar ciliate, Euplotes nobilii, and six mesophilic pheromones (Er-1, Er-2, Er-10, Er-11, Er-22 and Er-23) from the temperate-water sister species, Euplotes raikovi, were studied i...
In this study, we isolated and characterized bacterial strains from ancient (Neogene) permafrost sediment that was permanently frozen for 3.5 million years. The sampling site was located at Mammoth Mountain in the Aldan river valley in Central Yakuti...
Modern genetic analysis has shown that most polymorphisms associated with human disease are non-coding. Much of the functional information contained in the non-coding genome consists of cis-regulatory sequences (CRSs) that are required to respond to...
BRCA1 is a large multi-domain protein with a pivotal role in maintaining genome stability and cell cycle progression. Germline mutations in the BRCA1 gene confer an estimated lifetime risk of 60%–80% for breast cancer and 15%–60% for ovarian cancer....
Assisted colonization—the deliberate translocation of species from unsuitable to suitable regions—is a controversial management tool that aims to prevent the extinction of populations that are unable to migrate in response to climate change or to sur...
Adrenocortical tumors are frequently found in the general population, and may be benign adrenocortical adenomas or malignant adrenocortical carcinomas. Unfortunately the clinical, biochemical and histopathological distinction between benign and malig...
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