| 1. |
- Pizzari, T., et al.
(författare)
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A novel test of the phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis reveals independent components of fertility
- 2004
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8436 .- 1471-2970 .- 0962-8452 .- 1471-2954. ; 271:1534, s. 51-58
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis predicts that male sexual ornaments signal fertilizing efficiency and that the coevolution of male ornaments and female preference for such ornaments is driven by female pursuit of fertility benefits. In addition, directional testicular asymmetry frequently observed in birds has been suggested to reflect fertilizing efficiency and to covary with ornament expression. However, the idea of a phenotypic relationship between male ornaments and fertilizing efficiency is often tested in populations where environmental effects mask the underlying genetic associations between ornaments and fertilizing efficiency implied by this idea. Here, we adopt a novel design, which increases genetic diversity through the crossing of two divergent populations while controlling for environmental effects, to test: (i) the phenotypic relationship between male ornaments and both, gonadal (testicular mass) and gametic (sperm quality) components of fertilizing efficiency, and (ii) the extent to which these components are phenotypically integrated in the fowl, Gallus gallus. We show that consistent with theory, the testosterone-dependent expression of a male ornament, the comb, predicted testicular mass. However, despite their functional inter-dependence, testicular mass and sperm quality were not phenotypically integrated. Consistent with this result, males of one parental population invested more in testicular and comb mass, whereas males of the other parental population had higher sperm quality. We found no evidence that directional testicular asymmetry covaried with ornament expression. These results shed new light on the evolutionary relationship between male fertilizing efficiency and ornaments. Although testosterone-dependent ornaments may covary with testicular mass and thus reflect sperm production rate, the lack of phenotypic integration between gonadal and gametic traits reveals that the expression of an ornament is unlikely to reflect the overall fertilizing efficiency of a male.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Allen, John, et al.
(författare)
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General discussion
- 2003
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 1471-2970. ; 358:1429, s. 217-222
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 4. |
- Allen, John
(författare)
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The function of genomes in bioenergetic organelles.
- 2003
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 1471-2970. ; 358:1429, s. 19-37
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Mitochondria and chloroplasts are energy-transducing organelles of the cytoplasm of eukaryotic cells. They originated as bacterial symbionts whose host cells acquired respiration from the precursor of the mitochondrion, and oxygenic photosynthesis from the precursor of the chloroplast. The host cells also acquired genetic information from their symbionts, eventually incorporating much of it into their own genomes. Genes of the eukaryotic cell nucleus now encode most mitochondrial and chloroplast proteins. Genes are copied and moved between cellular compartments with relative ease, and there is no obvious obstacle to successful import of any protein precursor from the cytosol. So why are any genes at all retained in cytoplasmic organelles? One proposal is that these small but functional genomes provide a location for genes that is close to, and in the same compartment as, their gene products. This co-location facilitates rapid and direct regulatory coupling. Redox control of synthesis de novo is put forward as the common property of those proteins that must be encoded and synthesized within mitochondria and chloroplasts. This testable hypothesis is termed CORR, for co-location for redox regulation. Principles, predictions and consequences of CORR are examined in the context of competing hypotheses and current evidence.
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| 5. |
- Andersson, Siv, et al.
(författare)
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On the origin of mitochondria: a genomics perspective.
- 2003
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 1471-2970. ; 358:1429, s. 165-177
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The availability of complete genome sequence data from both bacteria and eukaryotes provides information about the contribution of bacterial genes to the origin and evolution of mitochondria. Phylogenetic analyses based on genes located in the mitochondrial genome indicate that these genes originated from within the f-proteobacteria. A number of ancestral bacterial genes have also been transferred from the mitochondrial to the nuclear genome, as evidenced by the presence of orthologous genes in the mitochondrial genome in some species and in the nuclear genome of other species. However, a multitude of mitochondrial proteins encoded in the nucleus display no homology to bacterial proteins, indicating that these originated within the eukaryotic cell subsequent to the acquisition of the endosymbiont. An analysis of the expression patterns of yeast nuclear genes coding for mitochondrial proteins has shown that genes predicted to be of eukaryotic origin are mainly translated on polysomes that are free in the cytosol whereas those of putative bacterial origin are translated on polysomes attached to the mitochondrion. The strong relationship with f-proteobacterial genes observed for some mitochondrial genes, combined with the lack of such a relationship for others, indicates that the modern mitochondrial proteome is the product of both reductive and expansive processes.
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| 6. |
- Chow, Wah Soon, et al.
(författare)
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The role of inactive photosystem-II-mediated quenching in a last-ditch community defence against high light stress in vivo - Discussion
- 2002
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : Royal Society. - 0962-8436 .- 1471-2970. ; 357:1426, s. 1449-1450
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Photoinactivation of photosystem II (PSII), the light–induced loss of ability to evolve oxygen, is an inevitable event during normal photosynthesis, exacerbated by saturating light but counteracted by repair via new protein synthesis. The photoinactivation of PSII is dependent on the dosage of light: in the absence of repair, typically one PSII is photoinactivated per 107 photons, although the exact quantum yield of photoinactivation is modulated by a number of factors, and decreases as fewer active PSII targets are available. PSII complexes initially appear to be photoinactivated independently; however, when less than 30% functional PSII complexes remain, they seem to be protected by strongly dissipative PSII reaction centres in several plant species examined so far, a mechanism which we term ‘inactive PSII–mediated quenching‘. This mechanism appears to require a pH gradient across the photosynthetic membrane for its optimal operation. The residual fraction of functional PSII complexes may, in turn, aid in the recovery of photoinactivated PSII complexes when conditions become less severe. This mechanism may be important for the photosynthetic apparatus in extreme environments such as those experienced by over–wintering evergreen plants, desert plants exposed to drought and full sunlight and shade plants in sustained sunlight
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| 7. |
- Cramer, W, et al.
(författare)
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Tropical forests and the global carbon cycle: impacts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, climate change and rate of deforestation
- 2004
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 1471-2970. ; 359:1443, s. 331-343
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The remaining carbon stocks in wet tropical forests are currently at risk because of anthropogenic deforestation, but also because of the possibility of release driven by climate change. To identify the relative roles of CO2 increase, changing temperature and rainfall, and deforestation in the future, and the magnitude of their impact on atmospheric CO2 concentrations, we have applied a dynamic global vegetation model, using multiple scenarios of tropical deforestation (extrapolated from two estimates of current rates) and multiple scenarios of changing climate (derived from four independent offline general circulation model simulations). Results show that deforestation will probably produce large losses of carbon, despite the uncertainty about the deforestation rates. Some climate models produce additional large fluxes due to increased drought stress caused by rising temperature and decreasing rainfall. One climate model, however, produces an additional carbon sink. Taken together, our estimates of additional carbon emissions during the twenty-first century, for all climate and deforestation scenarios, range from 101 to 367 Gt C, resulting in CO2 concentration increases above background values between 29 and 129 p.p.m. An evaluation of the method indicates that better estimates of tropical carbon sources and sinks require improved assessments of current and future deforestation, and more consistent precipitation scenarios from climate models. Notwithstanding the uncertainties, continued tropical deforestation will most certainly play a very large role in the build-up of future greenhouse gas concentrations.
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| 8. |
- Doolittle, W F, et al.
(författare)
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How big is the iceberg of which organellar genes in nuclear genomes are but the tip?
- 2003
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8436 .- 1471-2970. ; 358:1429, s. 39-58; discussion 57
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- As more and more complete bacterial and archaeal genome sequences become available, the role of lateral gene transfer (LGT) in shaping them becomes more and more clear. Over the long term, it may be the dominant force, affecting most genes in most prokaryotes. We review the history of LGT, suggesting reasons why its prevalence and impact were so long dismissed. We discuss various methods purporting to measure the extent of LGT, and evidence for and against the notion that there is a core of never-exchanged genes shared by all genomes, from which we can deduce the "true" organismal tree. We also consider evidence for, and implications of, LGT between prokaryotes and phagocytic eukaryotes.
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| 9. |
- Ekström, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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Evolution of photosensory pineal organs in new light: the fate of neurodocrine photoreceptors
- 2003
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 1471-2970. ; 358:1438, s. 1679-1700
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Pineal evolution is envisaged as a gradual transformation of pinealocytes (a gradual regression of pinealocyte sensory capacity within a particular cell line), the so-called sensory cell line of the pineal organ. In most non-mammals the pineal organ is a directly photosensory organ, while the pineal organ of mammals (epiphysis cerebri) is a non-sensory neuroendocrine organ under photoperiod control. The phylogenetic transformation of the pineal organ is reflected in the morphology and physiology of the main parenchymal cell type, the pinealocyte. In anamniotes, pinealocytes with retinal cone photoreceptor-like characteristics predominate, whereas in sauropsids so-called rudimentary photoreceptors predominate. These have well-developed secretory characteristics, and have been interpreted as intermediaries between the anamniote pineal photoreceptors and the mammalian non-sensory pinealocytes. We have re-examined the original studies on which the gradual transformation hypothesis of pineal evolution is based, and found that the evidence for this model of pineal evolution is ambiguous. In the light of recent advances in the understanding of neural development mechanisms, we propose a new hypothesis of pineal evolution, in which the old notion 'gradual regression within the sensory cell line' should be replaced with 'changes in fate restriction within the neural lineage of the pineal field'.
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| 10. |
- Eriksson, S, et al.
(författare)
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Low-temperature sensors in bacteria
- 2002
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Ingår i: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8436 .- 1471-2970. ; 357:1423, s. 887-893
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Bacteria are ubiquitous colonizers of various environments and host organisms, and they are therefore often subjected to drastic temperature alterations. Temperature alterations set demands on these colonizers, in that the bacteria need to readjust their biochemical constitution and physiology in order to survive and resume growth at the new temperature. Furthermore, temperature alteration is also a main factor determining the expression or repression of bacterial virulence functions. To cope with temperature variation, bacteria have devices for sensing temperature alterations and a means of translating this sensory event into a pragmatic gene response. While such regulatory cascades may ultimately be complicated, it appears that they contain primary sensor machinery at the top of the cascade. The functional core of such machinery is usually that of a temperature–induced conformational or physico–chemical change in the central constituents of the cell. In a sense, a bacterium can use structural alterations in its biomolecules as the primary thermometers or thermostats.
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