Publications by authors named "Aleksandra Patenkovic"

is considered a good model species for investigation of a population's ability to adapt and cope with climate changes. Decade long research has shown that inversion frequencies change in response to environmental factors indicating their role in adaptation to novel environments. The mechanisms behind organisms' responses to temperature are complex, involving changes in physiology, behavior, gene expression and regulation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The Griffon vulture, once widespread in Southeast Europe, now has its largest and most viable population in Serbia, which is crucial for genetic diversity and reintroduction efforts due to its endangered status.
  • Research was conducted from 2013-2021, using blood samples from 169 marked vultures to assess genetic relatedness and sex ratios, with specific analyses for inbreeding levels.
  • Results indicate a high inbreeding rate of 8.3% but a stable sex ratio of about 1:1, suggesting that despite some inbreeding, the population remains healthy and viable for conservation initiatives.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Urbanization can change biodiversity in both directions, positive and negative, and despite the rising global trend of urban beekeeping, little is known about the impact of urbanization on the genetic diversity of honey bees. We investigate how urbanization affects the genetic variability of feral and managed honey bee colonies that are spread throughout the entire city, even in highly urban areas, through genetic analysis of 82 worker bees. We found convincing evidence of high genetic differentiation between these two groups.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Socioeconomic interests and beekeeper preferences have often taken precedence over the conservation of locally native honey bee subspecies, leading to the predominance of admixture populations in human-dominated areas. To assess the genetic diversity of contemporary managed Serbian honey bee colonies, we used 14 microsatellite loci and analyzed 237 worker bees from 46 apiaries in eight localities of northern and southern Serbia. Furthermore, we compared data for nine microsatellite loci with 338 individuals from Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Spain.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how variations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) impact fitness in different populations and the role of nuclear DNA (nuDNA) in these interactions.
  • The research involved creating experimental lines by backcrossing iso female lines from four populations and testing them under various conditions, focusing on fitness traits such as desiccation resistance and developmental time.
  • Results indicated that sympatric mtDNA variants influence fitness, primarily interacting with nuDNA, and that temperature-specific factors play a more significant role than sex-specific selection in maintaining mtDNA diversity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Global warming and climate change are affecting many insect species in numerous ways. These species can develop diverse mechanisms as a response to variable environmental conditions. The rise in mean and extreme temperatures due to global warming and the importance of the population's ability to adapt to temperature stress will further increase.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Local populations of are rapidly changing by modern beekeeping through the introduction of nonnative queens, selection and migratory beekeeping. To assess the genetic diversity of contemporary managed honey bees in Serbia, we sequenced mitochondrial intergenic region of 241 worker bees from 46 apiaries at eight localities. Nine haplotypes were observed in our samples, with C2d being the most common and widespread.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Drosophila melanogaster is a leading model in population genetics and genomics, and a growing number of whole-genome data sets from natural populations of this species have been published over the last years. A major challenge is the integration of disparate data sets, often generated using different sequencing technologies and bioinformatic pipelines, which hampers our ability to address questions about the evolution of this species. Here we address these issues by developing a bioinformatics pipeline that maps pooled sequencing (Pool-Seq) reads from D.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

is an important model for antiviral immunity in arthropods, but very few DNA viruses have been described from the family Drosophilidae. This deficiency limits our opportunity to use natural host-pathogen combinations in experimental studies, and may bias our understanding of the virome. Here, we report fourteen DNA viruses detected in a metagenomic analysis of 6668 pool-sequenced , sampled from forty-seven European locations between 2014 and 2016.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Local adaptation to environmental stress at different levels of genetic polymorphism in various plants and animals has been documented through evolution of heavy metal tolerance. We used samples of Drosophila subobscura populations from two differently polluted environments to analyze the change of chromosomal inversion polymorphism as genetic marker during laboratory exposure to lead. Exposure to environmental contamination can affect the genetic content within a particular inversion and produce targets for selection in populations from different environments.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Gentiana lutea L., the yellow gentian, is herb known for its pharmacological properties, with a long tradition of use for the treatment of a variety of diseases including the use as a remedy for digestion, also in food products and in bitter beverages. The aim of the present study is to evaluate, for the first time, genotoxicity of gentian alone, and its antigenotoxicity against methyl methanesulfonate (MMS).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The effect of culinary-medicinal Royal Sun Agaricus (Agaricus brasiliensis) hot water extract on methyl methane sulfonate (MMS) induced mutagenicity/genotoxity in Drosophila melanogaster was studied using a quick and broadly applicable in vivo assay, i.e., the wing somatic mutation and recombination test.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The present study assayed the antimutagenic potential of Salvia officinalis (sage) in the form of tea infusion, by the somatic mutation and recombination test (SMART) on Drosophila melanogaster. The use of herbal infusions is much common in the human diet, so the aim of the present study was to estimate the antimutagenic effects of the S. officinalis tea rather than essential oils.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF