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Vertebrates share the same general body plan and organs, possess related sets of genes, and rely on similar physiological mechanisms, yet show great diversity in morphology, habitat and behavior. Alteration of...
Information on how genomic information from fish to human encodes the same tissues has until now emerged one gene at a time. The study published in this issue now provides lists of genes and their expression l...
The protein kinase inhibitor imatinib, also known as Gleevec, has been a notable success in treating chronic myelogenous leukemia. A recent paper in BMC Structural Biology reports a 1.75 Ã… crystal structure of im...
The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Biology 2010 8:82
Reconstruction of transcriptional regulatory networks of uncharacterized bacteria is a main challenge for the post-genomic era. Recent studies, including one in BMC Systems Biology, address this problem in the re...
The obligate intracellular bacterial endosymbionts of insects are a paradigm for reductive genome evolution. A study published recently in BMC Biology demonstrates that similar evolutionary forces shaping genome ...
Metastasis is the major cause of death in breast cancer patients. Gene-expression studies have shown that the likelihood of metastasis can be predicted from analysis of primary tumors. Two recent papers in BMC Me...
A detailed sequence comparison of the MSX homeobox family sheds light on its evolution and identifies new conserved motifs. But in the absence of corroborative genetic data, phylogenomics alone can provide onl...
A lattice-model study of double-mutant cycles published in BMC Structural Biology underscores how interactions in non-native conformations can lead to thermodynamic coupling between distant residues in globular p...
Good early training of graduate students and postdocs is needed to prevent them turning into future generations of manuscript-savaging reviewers. How can we intercalate typical papers into our training?
Gene and genome duplications are considered to be the main evolutionary mechanisms contributing to the unrivalled biodiversity of bony fish. New studies of vitellogenin yolk proteins, including a report in BMC Ev...
Squamates (lizards and snakes) offer an exciting model system for research on the evolution of body form. A new phylogenetic study in BMC Evolutionary Biology of Australian lizards shows remarkable evolutionary l...
Darwin's focus on small quantitative variations as the raw material of evolution may have prevented him from discovering the laws of inheritance.
The relative sizes of parts of an organism frequently depend on the absolute size of the individual, a relationship that is generally described by power laws. I show here that these power laws are a consequenc...
In 1959 Ernst Mayr challenged the relevance of mathematical models to evolutionary studies and was answered by JBS Haldane in a witty and convincing essay. Fifty years on, I conclude that the importance of mat...
Unexpected findings in evolutionary genomics both question the role of selection in genome evolution and clarify how genomes work.
An animal navigating to an unseen odor source must accurately resolve the spatiotemporal distribution of that stimulus in order to express appropriate upwind flight behavior. Intermittency of natural odor plum...
Odor space, the representation of odor quality in the insect brain, is known to be optimally resolved when lateral inhibitory pathways are functioning normally. A new study published in the Journal of Biology now...
Although most epidemic human infectious diseases are caused by recently introduced pathogens, cospeciation of parasite and host is commonplace for endemic infections. Occasional host infidelity, however, provi...
A recent report in BMC Biology indicates that modern humans first arrived in southern East Asia 60,000 years ago and settled the rest of East Asia from there. This early date and migration route has significant i...
A recent study in BMC Evolutionary Biology shows that many of the open reading frames in mammalian Hox genes are more conserved than expected on the basis of their protein sequence. The presence of highly conserv...
Most odors are perceived to have the same quality over a large concentration range, but the neural mechanisms that permit concentration-invariant olfactory perception are unknown. In larvae of the vinegar fly Dro...
Since the mid-1990s, insights obtained from electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography have transformed our understanding of how the most important ribozyme in the cell, the ribosome, catalyzes protein synt...
Sensory identity usually remains constant across a large intensity range. Vertebrates use lateral inhibition to match the sensitivity of retinal ganglion cells to the intensity of light. A new study published in
The individual 'validation' experiments typically included in papers reporting genome-scale studies often do not reflect the overall merits of the work.
The complete genome sequence of the crenarchaeon Ignicoccus hospitalis published recently in Genome Biology provides a great leap forward in the dissection of its unique association with another hyperthermophilic...
Sperm from Drosophila simulans that carry a sex-ratio distorter is preferentially lost from females' sperm-storage organs. This suggests that sperm dumping is a major factor affecting sperm competition in this sp...
The investigation of vertebrate limb regeneration, a favorite topic of early developmental biologists, is enjoying a renaissance thanks to recently developed molecular and genetic tools, as indicated in recent...
Artemisinins are the most important anti-malarial drugs in use today, but are more costly than previous anti-malarials and production and price tend to fluctuate. Alternative ways of producing artemisinins are...
Despite its remarkable capacity to undergo change at timescales ranging from a fraction of a second to a lifetime, there are many aspects of the nervous system that can be modified only at the enormously longe...
Cellular RNA polymerases are highly conserved enzymes that undergo complex conformational changes to coordinate the processing of nucleic acid substrates through the active site. Two domains in particular, the...
A comprehensive survey of single amino-acid substitution mutations critical for RNA polymerase function published in Journal of Biology supports a proposed mechanism for polymerase action in which movement of the...
Little is known about genetic variants that predispose individuals toward leanness or fatness. This minireview highlights recent advances in the study of human populations, animal models and synergistic effort...
Recent data published in BMC Biology from the globin gene clusters in platypus, together with data from other species, show that β-globin genes transposed from one chromosomal location to another. This resolves s...
The efficiency of RNA interference varies between different organisms, even among nematodes. A recent report of successful RNA interference in the nematode Panagrolaimus superbus in BMC Molecular Biology has impl...
The identification of aquaglyceroporins as uptake channels for arsenic and antimony shows how these toxic elements can enter the food chain, and suggests that food plants could be genetically modified to exclu...
Genetic studies of organisms based on coalescent modeling and paleoenvironmental data, including a new study in BMC Biology of Mexican jays in the sky islands of Arizona and northern Mexico, show that populations...
Cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) is a critical second messenger that regulates cardiovascular function and vision in humans. Two recent papers, including one in BMC Structural Biology, have revealed atomic s...
X-chromosome inactivation occurs randomly for one of the two X chromosomes in female cells during development. Inactivation occurs when RNA transcribed from the Xist gene on the X chromosome from which it is expr...
A previous knockout of the transcription factor gene nuclear factor IX (NFIX) in mice produced impaired development of the corpus callosum and severe skeletal defects. A recent paper in BMC Developmental Biology ...
How does an animal host prevent intracellular symbionts getting out of hand? A new paper in BMC Biology provides evidence that the mutualism between a beetle and its bacterial endosymbiont could be mediated throu...
One strategy for spinal cord injury repair is to make cellular bridges that support axon regeneration. However, the bridging cells often fail to integrate with host tissue and may lead to increased pain sensit...
Explaining the evolution of cooperative behavior is a long-standing problem for which much theory has been developed. A recent paper in BMC Biology tests central elements of this theory by manipulating a simple b...
Visual perception is a key element in evolution, as it is required for many life processes. Two recent studies in BMC Biology and BMC Evolutionary Biology shed light on the genetic determinants of color detection...
Two critical challenges in developing cell-transplantation therapies for injured or diseased tissues are to identify optimal cells and harmful side effects. This is of particular concern in the case of spinal ...
The major physiologic theory of aging, the disposable soma theory, links dietary restriction (DR), also known as calorie or food restriction, to prolonged lifespan and makes specific predictions about the effe...
The pathogenesis of severe malarial disease is not yet fully understood. It is clear that host immunopathology plays a central role, and a recent paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology suggests that the ability of the...