| 1. |
- Jiang, X., et al.
(författare)
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Shared heritability and functional enrichment across six solid cancers
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2041-1723. ; 10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Quantifying the genetic correlation between cancers can provide important insights into the mechanisms driving cancer etiology. Using genome-wide association study summary statistics across six cancer types based on a total of 296,215 cases and 301,319 controls of European ancestry, here we estimate the pair-wise genetic correlations between breast, colorectal, head/neck, lung, ovary and prostate cancer, and between cancers and 38 other diseases. We observed statistically significant genetic correlations between lung and head/neck cancer (r(g) = 0.57, p = 4.6 x 10(-8)), breast and ovarian cancer (r(g) = 0.24, p = 7 x 10(-5)), breast and lung cancer (r(g) = 0.18, p = 1.5 x 10(-6)) and breast and colorectal cancer (r(g) = 0.15, p = 1.1 x 10(-4)). We also found that multiple cancers are genetically correlated with non-cancer traits including smoking, psychiatric diseases and metabolic characteristics. Functional enrichment analysis revealed a significant excess contribution of conserved and regulatory regions to cancer heritability. Our comprehensive analysis of cross-cancer heritability suggests that solid tumors arising across tissues share in part a common germline genetic basis.
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| 2. |
- Gilbert, F., et al.
(författare)
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Sediment reworking by the burrowing polychaete Hediste diversicolor modulated by environmental and biological factors across the temperate North Atlantic. A tribute to Gaston Desrosiers
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0022-0981. ; 541
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Particle mixing and irrigation of the seabed by benthic fauna (bioturbation) have major impacts on ecosystem functions such as remineralization of organic matter and sediment-water exchange. As a tribute to Prof. Gaston Desrosiers by the Nereis Park association, eighteen laboratories carried out a collaborative experiment to acquire a global snapshot of particle reworking by the polychaete Hediste diversicolor at 16 sites surrounding the Northern Atlantic. Organisms and soft sediments were collected during May - July at different geographical locations and, using a common laboratory protocol, particulate fluorescent tracers (`luminophores') were used to quantify particle transport over a 10-day period. Particle mixing was quantified using the maximum penetration depth of tracers (MPD), particle diffusive coefficients (D-b), and non-local transport coefficients (r). Non-local coefficients (reflecting centimeter scale transport steps) ranged from 0.4 to 15 yr(-1), and were not correlated across sites with any measured biological (biomass, biovolume) or environmental parameters (temperature, grain size, organic matter). Maximum penetration depths (MPD) averaged similar to 10.7 cm (6.5-14.5 cm), and were similar to the global average bioturbation depth inferred from short-lived radiochemical tracers. MPD was also not correlated with measures of size (individual biomass), but increased with grain size and decreased with temperature. Bio-diffusion (D-b) correlated inversely with individual biomass (size) and directly with temperature over the environmental range (Q(10) similar to 1.7; 5-21 degrees C). The transport data were comparable in magnitude to rates reported for localized H. diversicolor populations of similar size, and confirmed some but not all correlations between sediment reworking and biological and environmental variables found in previous studies. The results imply that measures of particle reworking activities of a species from a single location can be generally extrapolated to different populations at similar conditions.
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| 3. |
- Smith, N. G., et al.
(författare)
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Global photosynthetic capacity is optimized to the environment
- 2019
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 22:3, s. 506-517
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Earth system models (ESMs) use photosynthetic capacity, indexed by the maximum Rubisco carboxylation rate (V-cmax), to simulate carbon assimilation and typically rely on empirical estimates, including an assumed dependence on leaf nitrogen determined from soil fertility. In contrast, new theory, based on biochemical coordination and co-optimization of carboxylation and water costs for photosynthesis, suggests that optimal V-cmax can be predicted from climate alone, irrespective of soil fertility. Here, we develop this theory and find it captures 64% of observed variability in a global, field-measured V-cmax dataset for C-3 plants. Soil fertility indices explained substantially less variation (32%). These results indicate that environmentally regulated biophysical constraints and light availability are the first-order drivers of global photosynthetic capacity. Through acclimation and adaptation, plants efficiently utilize resources at the leaf level, thus maximizing potential resource use for growth and reproduction. Our theory offers a robust strategy for dynamically predicting photosynthetic capacity in ESMs.
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| 4. |
- Hodgins-Davis, Andrea, et al.
(författare)
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Abundant Gene-by-Environment Interactions in Gene Expression Reaction Norms to Copper within Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
- 2012
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Ingår i: Genome Biology and Evolution. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1759-6653. ; 4:11, s. 1061-79
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Genetic variation for plastic phenotypes potentially contributes phenotypic variation to populations that can be selected during adaptation to novel ecological contexts. However, the basis and extent of plastic variation that manifests in diverse environments remains elusive. Here, we characterize copper reaction norms for mRNA abundance among five Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains to 1) describe population variation across the full range of ecologically relevant copper concentrations, from starvation to toxicity, and 2) to test the hypothesis that plastic networks exhibit increased population variation for gene expression. We find that although the vast majority of the variation is small in magnitude (considerably <2-fold), not just some, but most genes demonstrate variable expression across environments, across genetic backgrounds, or both. Plastically expressed genes included both genes regulated directly by copper-binding transcription factors Mac1 and Ace1 and genes indirectly responding to the downstream metabolic consequences of the copper gradient, particularly genes involved in copper, iron, and sulfur homeostasis. Copper-regulated gene networks exhibited more similar behavior within the population in environments where those networks have a large impact on fitness. Nevertheless, expression variation in genes like Cup1, important to surviving copper stress, was linked with variation in mitotic fitness and in the breadth of differential expression across the genome. By revealing a broader and deeper range of population variation, our results provide further evidence for the interconnectedness of genome-wide mRNA levels, their dependence on environmental context and genetic background, and the abundance of variation in gene expression that can contribute to future evolution.
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| 5. |
- Wang, Zheng, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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Future perspectives and challenges of fungal systematics in the age of big data
- 2016
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Ingår i: Biology of Microfungi. - Switzerland : Springer International Publishing. - 9783319291352 ; , s. 25-46
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Mycological research, especially research on fungal evolution and ecology, requires a robust and detailed fungal classification and phylogeny to facilitate efficient and informative communication among mycologists as well as for comparative biology relevant to the larger bioscience community. The field of fungal systematics has undergone numerous revisions recently, from early morphological classifications to an integrative taxonomy that is increasingly reliant on molecular phylogeny. These revisions have taken place at a range of taxonomic ranks, fueled by advances surmounting two major challenges, namely, adequate and balanced sampling of genetic markers and taxa and reinterpretation of phylogenetic informativeness of numerous morphological and ecological characters. The Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life (AFTOL) projects reflected a corresponding surge of collaborative effort in fungal molecular phylogeny using PCR and Sanger sequencing. Here we review recent progress in fungal systematics after AFTOL, in the post-Sanger age, and discuss the future fungal systematics that is emerging as a result of the extraordinary volume of data being gathered by high-throughput sequencing. We examine how environmental DNA surveys, sequence-based classification, and phylogenomics and phylotranscriptomics can impact fungal systematics and point out that sequenced fungal genomes could significantly improve multi-marker phylogenetic inference at a range of levels of fungal systematics by facilitating application of phylogenetically informative experimental design. We argue that it is time to integrate fungal systematics, genome-enabled mycology, and other dimensions of fungal research within the framework of evolutionary biology.
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| 6. |
- Wang, Zheng, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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Tasting soil fungal diversity with earth tongues: phylogenetic test of SATé alignments for environmental ITS data
- 2011
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Ingår i: PLoS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 6:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- An abundance of novel fungal lineages have been indicated by DNA sequencing of the nuclear ribosomal ITS region from environmental samples such as soil and wood. Although phylogenetic analysis of these novel lineages is a key component of unveiling the structure and diversity of complex communities, such analyses are rare for environmental ITS data due to the difficulties of aligning this locus across significantly divergent taxa. One potential approach to this issue is simultaneous alignment and tree estimation. We targeted divergent ITS sequences of the earth tongue fungi (Geoglossomycetes), a basal class in the Ascomycota, to assess the performance of SATé, recent software that combines progressive alignment and tree building. We found that SATé performed well in generating high-quality alignments and in accurately estimating the phylogeny of earth tongue fungi. Drawing from a data set of 300 sequences of earth tongues and progressively more distant fungal lineages, 30 insufficiently identified ITS sequences from the public sequence databases were assigned to the Geoglossomycetes. The association between earth tongues and plants has been hypothesized for a long time, but hard evidence is yet to be collected. The ITS phylogeny showed that four ectomycorrhizal isolates shared a clade with Geoglossum but not with Trichoglossum earth tongues, pointing to the significant potential inherent to ecological data mining of environmental samples. Environmental sampling holds the key to many focal questions in mycology, and simultaneous alignment and tree estimation, as performed by SATé, can be a highly efficient companion in that pursuit.
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