Influence of selection on the probability of fixation at a locus with multiple alleles.

Background: Genes exist in a population in a variety of forms (alleles), as a consequence of multiple mutation events that have arisen over the course of time. In this work we consider a locus that is subject to either multiplicative or additive selection, and has n alleles, where n can take the values 2, 3, 4, . We focus on determining the probability of fixation of each of the n alleles.

Clinical decision-making and dispensing performance in pharmacy students and its relationship to executive function and implicit memory.

Background: When providing pharmaceutical care, the pharmacist relies upon a clinical decision-making process that involves information gathering, clinical reasoning, and clinical judgment. Typically, pharmacists have to identify, retain and recall numerous pieces of key information arranged spatially in medical records and prescriptions or verbally from colleagues when making decisions. Executive function, including spatial working memory and verbal reasoning, along with other cognitive domains, will likely contribute to the elements that comprise this process.

Co-Occurrence of Domestic Dogs and Gastropod Molluscs in Public Dog-Walking Spaces and Implications for Infection with : A Preliminary Study.

is a helminth parasite of domestic dogs that is increasing in range and prevalence. Its lifecycle requires terrestrial gastropod mollusc ("gastropod") intermediate hosts, but research is lacking regarding contact risk in situ. We studied co-occurrence between dogs and gastropods in dog-walking spaces in an hotspot in southern England, United Kingdom, with the aim of quantifying environmental and spatio-temporal overlap.

Decreased 14-3-3 expression correlates with age-related regional reductions in CNS dopamine and motor function in the pond snail, Lymnaea.

Ageing is associated in many organisms with a reduction in motor movements. We have previously shown that the rate of feeding movements of the pond snail, Lymnaea, decreased with age but the underlying cause is not fully understood. Here, we show that dopamine in the cerebro-buccal complex is an important signalling molecule regulating feeding frequency in Lymnaea and that ageing is associated with a decrease in CNS dopamine.

Lethal mutations with fluctuating heterozygous effect: the lethal force of effective dominance.

The theory of population genetics leads to the expectation that in very large populations the frequencies of recessive lethal mutations are close to the square root of the mutation rate, corresponding to mutation-selection balance. There are numerous examples where the frequencies of such alleles are orders of magnitude larger than this result. In this work we theoretically investigate the role of temporal fluctuations in the heterozygous effect (h) for lethal mutations in very large populations.