Publications by authors named "Josane Freitas Sousa"

Article Synopsis
  • The genomes of lungfishes, particularly the recently sequenced African and South American species, provide insights into the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods during the Devonian period.
  • The Lepidosiren genome is the largest animal genome sequenced to date, about 91 Gb, and features significant genome expansion due to active transposable elements, growing rapidly over the past 100 million years.
  • The study finds that while lungfish chromosomes retain features of their ancient tetrapod ancestors, the loss of limb-like appendages in some species is likely linked to the deletion of specific enhancers associated with limb development.
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Salamanders, frog tadpoles and diverse lizards have the remarkable ability to regenerate tails. Palaeontological data suggest that this capacity is plesiomorphic, yet when the developmental and genetic architecture of tail regeneration arose is poorly understood. Here, we show morphological and molecular hallmarks of tetrapod tail regeneration in the West African lungfish , a living representative of the sister group of tetrapods.

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Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and little is known about the impact of deregulated expression of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the progression of this cancer. In this study, we explored RNA-Seq data to search for lncRNAs associated with melanoma progression. We found distinct lncRNA gene expression patterns across melanocytes, primary and metastatic melanoma cells.

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Whereas genome sequencing defines the genetic potential of an organism, transcript sequencing defines the utilization of this potential and links the genome with most areas of biology. To exploit the information within the human genome in the fight against cancer, we have deposited some two million expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from human tumors and their corresponding normal tissues in the public databases. The data currently define approximately 23,500 genes, of which only approximately 1,250 are still represented only by ESTs.

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