The Bats of Greece: An Updated Review of Their Distribution, Ecology and Conservation.

Bats of Greece have been studied since the second half of the 19th century. Their distribution and ecology, however, remain poorly understood. Conservation efforts for the protection of the roosting and foraging habitats of their populations in Greece are limited.

A minus-end directed kinesin motor directs gravitropism in Physcomitrella patens.

Gravity is a critical environmental factor regulating directional growth and morphogenesis in plants, and gravitropism is the process by which plants perceive and respond to the gravity vector. The cytoskeleton is proposed to play important roles in gravitropism, but the underlying mechanisms are obscure. Here we use genetic screening in Physcomitrella patens, to identify a locus GTRC, that when mutated, reverses the direction of protonemal gravitropism.

Recent gene-capture on the UV sex chromosomes of the moss Ceratodon purpureus.

Sex chromosomes evolve from ordinary autosomes through the expansion and subsequent degeneration of a region of suppressed recombination that is inherited through one sex. Here we investigate the relative timing of these processes in the UV sex chromosomes of the moss Ceratodon purpureus using molecular population genetic analyses of eight newly discovered sex-linked loci. In this system, recombination is suppressed on both the female-transmitted (U) sex chromosome and the male-transmitted (V) chromosome.

Identification and functional characterization of two Δ12-fatty acid desaturases associated with essential linoleic acid biosynthesis in Physcomitrella patens.

Two Δ(12)-desaturases associated with the primary steps of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (LC-PUFA) biosynthesis were successfully cloned from Physcomitrella patens and their functions identified. The open reading frames (ORFs) of PpFAD2-1 and PpFAD2-2 consisted of 1,128 bp and code for 375 amino acids. Their deduced polypeptides showed 62-64 % identity to microsomal Δ(12)-desaturases from other higher plants, and each contained the three histidine clusters typical of the catalytic domains of such enzymes.