• Genome Comparison of Ants

    Updated: 2010-09-01 14:11:00
    By comparing two species of ants, Shelley Berger, PhD, the Daniel S. Och University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and his colleagues Danny Reinberg, PhD, New York University, and Juergen Liebig, PhD, Arizona State University, have established an important new avenue of research for epigenetics -- the study of how the expression or suppression of particular genes affects an organism's characteristics, development, and even behavior........

  • Evolutionary response to climate change

    Updated: 2010-09-01 14:11:00
    Researchers at the University of Oregon have determined the fine-scale genetic structure of the first animal to show an evolutionary response to rapid climate change. They used a high-throughput sequencing technique called Restriction-site Associated DNA (RAD) tagging to make the discovery. Their results, which focus on the pitcher plant mosquito, Wyeomyia smithii, are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)........

  • Parasitic Editors Win the Genome

    Updated: 2010-08-31 18:01:24
    In biology, fitness can be crudely measured by a simple method: counting. If a particular species is well represented in a particular ecosystem, one can conclude that evolution has treated them well, with circumstances allowing them to thrive. It’s a bit simplistic to declare evolutionary winners or losers, but a species that over-populates an island [...]

  • Hitchhiking bacteria can go against the flow

    Updated: 2010-08-15 10:02:54
    A newly released co-author of studyed by professor Kam Tang of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science reveals that tiny aquatic organisms known as "water fleas" play an important role in carrying hitchhiking bacteria to otherwise inaccessible lake and ocean habitats. The article, "Bacteria dispersal by hitchhiking on zooplankton," appeared in the June 29 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was co-authored by researchers from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Stechlin, Gera number of........

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