Evolution of developmental mechanisms and life history in cnidarians
July 4, 2012 at 2:39 pm
In response to a recent deluge of inquiries about the mythical creatures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admistration (NOAA) has attempted to clarify the situation by releasing the following statement: “no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found”.
February 19, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Sequencing the genome of an Aboriginal Australian indicates that Aborigines diverged ~62,000-75,000 years ago from the gene pool shared by all living non-african humans, and represent a separate migration into Asia from the ancestors of modern Asians, which diverged from european ancestors ~25,000-38,000 years ago. The authors note that their data is consistent with Aboriginal Australians being the direct descendants from the first humans in Australia, dating to ~50,000 years B.P., suggesting that Aboriginal Australians likely have one of the oldest continuous population histories outside sub-Saharan Africa today.
January 13, 2012 at 9:51 am
Anciently Asexual Bdelloid Rotifers Escape Lethal Fungal Parasites by Drying Up and Blowing Away. — Wilson and Sherman explore a mechanism that asexual rotifers may utilize (dessication and aeolian dispersal) to escape the Red Queen model’s problem of coevolved pathogens/parasites in asexual lineages.
January 11, 2012 at 8:55 pm
Interactions between cancer stem cells and their niche govern metastatic colonization. – Malanchi, et al., find that infiltrating tumour cells need to induce stromal periostin (POSTN) expression in the secondary target organ to initiate colonization. POSTN is required for cancer stem cell maintenance, and blocking its function prevents metastasis. POSTN recruits Wnt ligands and thereby increases Wnt signalling in cancer stem cells at the site of secondary colonization. The authors hypothesize that the influence on stromal cells by infiltrating tumour cells is an important step in metastatic colonization, and that preventing de novo niche formation may be a novel strategy for the treatment of metastatic disease.
January 11, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Acropora digitifera genome suggests earlier date for anemone-coral divergence of about 500 million years ago, approximately 260 million years earlier than the emergence of reef-building scleractinian corals in the fossil record.