353 Articles with the topic: Evolutionary Biology
Conserved Gene Expression Reveals Our Inner Fish
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 4 months (www.sciencedaily.com)
A study of gene expression in chickens, frogs, pufferfish, mice and people has revealed surprising similarities in several key tissues. Researchers have shown that expression in tissues with a limited number of specialized cell types is strongly conserved, even between the mammalian and non-mammalian vertebrates. 
Evolution: Biology's next top model?
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 4 months (www.nature.com)
From Antarctic icefish to Galapagos finches, there are some interesting characters at the fringes of developmental biology. Brendan Maher explores a world of alternative model organisms.
The New Epigenetics: Poor Nutrition in the Womb Causes Permanent Genetic Changes in Offspring
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 4 months (www.sciencedaily.com)
The new science of epigenetics explains how genes can be modified by environment. One prime result of epigenetic inquiry has just been published online in The FASEB Journal: You are what your mother did not eat during pregnancy.
In this report, scientists from the University of Utah show that rat fetuses receiving poor nutrition in the womb become genetically primed to be born into an environment lacking proper nutrition.
Is love at first sight real? It could be for fruit flies.
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.eurekalert.org)
Leave it to geneticists to answer a question that has perplexed humanity since the dawn of time: does love at first sight truly exist? According to a study published in the April 2009 issue of the journal GENETICS, a team of scientists from the United States and Australia discovered that at the genetic level, some males and females are more compatible than others, and that this compatibility plays an important role in mate selection, mating outcomes, and future reproductive behaviors
Slightly more girls born to parents in the tropics than to parents in other places
Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
The first global study on human sex ratios reveals that parents are slightly more likely to give birth to female children at tropical latitudes. Researchers have been collecting data for this study for ten years.
The worldwide average is 105 boys for every hundred girls, but this varies a great deal by continent and even by country. In the tropics, the average percentage of male births drops to only 51.1%.
The article takes into account latitude, average temperature and day length, the last of which seems to be most important
The oldest articulated osteichthyan reveals mosaic gnathostome characters
icecream submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.nature.com)
The discovery of an exceptionally preserved primitive fish from the Ludlow of Yunnan, China, that indicates that the minimum date for the actinopterygian–sarcopterygian split was no later than 419 million years ago.
How Did Insects Get Their Wings?
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (blogs.sciencemag.org)
Exactly how insects evolved flight is a heated issue, in part because the fossil evidence for winged insects remains full of gaps. But living insects that are similar to ancestral species could also shed light on the origins of insect flight. In a study reported online this week in Biology Letters, researchers report that bristletails, primitive, wingless insects that live in the tropical forests of Peru, can use long antennae-like filaments extending from their rear ends to help them glide to tree trunks as they jump or fall from forest canopies
Dinosaurs may have developed protofeathers earlier than we thought
Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.nature.com)
The fine-grained stones of China's Liaoning Province have yielded up another fossilized find: Early feathers. So far, almost all of the finds showing feathered dinosaurs have been theropods--a bipedal group of dinosaurs including the Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor genera. This find, however, seems to be a heterodontosaurid from the early Cretaceous, which is itself significant in demonstrating that the heterodontosaurids managed to survive so late and range into Asia
A Curious Case of Genetic Resurrection
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
Some genes just won't stay dead. Between 40 million and 50 million years ago, a slice of DNA called IRGM stopped functioning in the ancestors of modern-day monkeys. But 25 million years later, in the lineage that led to humans and great apes, three random events turned the gene back on.
In mammals such as rats and dogs, IRGM (immunity-related GTPase family, M) helps protect from bacterial pathogens such as salmonella. Humans and apes also appear to use the gene
HIV Adapts to Escape Immune Response
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (main.uab.edu)
A new study out of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Oxford University in England describes the human immunodeficiency virus's ability to adapt and avoid the human immune system. It spells out at least fourteen different changes, called escape mutations, that help keep itself alive after interacting genetically with the immunity molecules that would normally attack it.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) adapts so well to the body's defense system that any successful AIDS vaccine must keep pace with the ever-changing immunological profile of the virus
Survival of the Weakest? Cyclical Competition of Three Species Favors Weakest As Victor
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (www.sciencedaily.com)
Standard Darwinian evolutionary theory teaches "survival of the fittest": any two species that require the same niche will compete until one or the other is gone, either dead, migrated or adapted to different circumstances. Natural selection will favor one or the other, but there are no cases in which both species remain. And species get stronger over time. Faster predators provide an evolutionary pressure for faster prey, which in turn provides pressure for faster predators. Things get fitter, not less fit
NC State study finds genes important to sleep
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (www.eurekalert.org)
For many animals, sleep is a risk: foraging for food, mingling with mates and guarding against predators just aren't possible while snoozing.
How, then, has this seemingly life-threatening behavior remained constant among various species of animals?
A new study by scientists at North Carolina State University shows that the fruit fly is genetically wired to sleep, although the sleep comes in widely variable amounts and patterns. Learning more about the genetics of sleep in model animals could lead to advances in understanding human sleep and how sleep loss affects the human condition.
Billions of years ago, microbes were key in developing modern nitrogen cycle
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (www.eurekalert.org)
As the world marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, there is much focus on evolution in animals and plants. But new research shows that for the countless billions of tiniest creatures – microbes – large-scale evolution was completed 2.5 billion years ago.
"For microbes, it appears that almost all of their major evolution took place before we have any record of them, way back in the dark mists of prehistory," said Roger Buick, a University of Washington paleontologist and astrobiologist.
All living organisms need nitrogen, a basic component of amino acids and proteins
An Earlier Debut for a Famous Algae
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
Life takes cooperation. That's true in politics, on the playground--and for evolution, because switching from a “me” to “we” mindset helped cells evolve to more complex organisms. New research shows that cells in green algae called Volvox may have learned to cooperate much earlier than thought, shifting the evolutionary time frame for this model organism back hundreds of millions of years--a somewhat controversial finding.
Volvox is a perennial favorite among biologists, who study the algae to learn how multicellular organisms evolved
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (www.sciencedaily.com)
A new series of mutations have been discovered that allow rats to resist the effects of the popular poison warfarin. New research describes eighteen new genetic changes found in rats from four continents.
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