Published in BMC Evolutionary Biology
BackgroundHow vascular systems and their respiratory pigments evolved is still debated. While many animals present a vascular system, hemoglobin exists as a blood pigment only in a few groups (vertebrates, annelids, a few arthropod and mollusk species). Hemoglobins are formed of globin sub-units, belonging to multigene families, in various multimer...
Published in BMC Evolutionary Biology
BackgroundEukaryotic protein-coding genes consist of exons and introns. Exon–intron borders are conserved between species and thus their changes might be observed only on quite long evolutionary distances. One of the rarest types of change, in which intron relocates over a short distance, is called "intron sliding", but the reality of this event ha...
Published in BMC Evolutionary Biology
BackgroundMonoculture farming poses significant disease challenges, but fungus-farming termites are able to successfully keep their monoculture crop free from contamination by other fungi. It has been hypothesised that obligate gut passage of all plant substrate used to manure the fungal symbiont is key to accomplish this. Here we refute this hypot...
Published in BMC Evolutionary Biology
BackgroundTrypanosomes are single-celled eukaryotic parasites characterised by the unique biology of their mitochondrial DNA. African livestock trypanosomes impose a major burden on agriculture across sub-Saharan Africa, but are poorly understood compared to those that cause sleeping sickness and Chagas disease in humans. Here we explore the potent...
Published in BMC Evolutionary Biology
BackgroundThe huntingtin-associated protein 40 (HAP40) abundantly interacts with huntingtin (HTT), the protein that is altered in Huntington’s disease (HD). Therefore, we analysed the evolution of HAP40 and its interaction with HTT.ResultsWe found that in amniotes HAP40 is encoded by a single-exon gene, whereas in all other organisms it is expresse...
Published in BMC Evolutionary Biology
BackgroundLife history theory predicts that during the lifespan of an organism, resources are allocated to either growth, somatic maintenance or reproduction. Resource allocation trade-offs determine the evolution and ecology of different life history strategies and define an organisms’ position along a fast–slow continuum in interspecific comparis...
Published in BMC Evolutionary Biology
BackgroundMeiosis is essential for sexual reproduction and generates genetically diverse haploid gametes from a diploid germ cell. Reduction of ploidy depends on active chromosome movements during early meiotic prophase I. Chromosome movements require telomere attachment to the nuclear envelope. This attachment is mediated by telomere adaptor prote...
Published in BMC Evolutionary Biology
BackgroundUnder the threat of climate change populations can disperse, acclimatise or evolve in order to avoid fitness loss. In light of this, it is important to understand neutral gene flow patterns as a measure of dispersal potential, but also adaptive genetic variation as a measure of evolutionary potential. In order to assess genetic variation ...
Published in BMC Evolutionary Biology
BackgroundSperm storage plays a key role in the reproductive success of many sexually-reproducing organisms, and the capacity of long-term sperm storage varies across species. While there are theoretical explanations for why such variation exists, to date there are no controlled empirical tests of the reproductive consequences of additional long-te...
Published in BMC Evolutionary Biology
BackgroundEvolutionary transitions from terrestrial to aquatic life history cause drastic changes in sensory systems. Indeed, the drastic changes in vision have been reported in many aquatic amniotes, convergently. Recently, the opsin genes of the full-aquatic sea snakes have been reported. However, those of the amphibious sea snakes have not been ...
