Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciências, Apartado 14, 2780-901, Oeiras, Portugal.
Published: October 2016
AI Article Synopsis
Article Abstract
One of the major challenges in evolutionary biology is to unravel the genetic basis of adaptation. This issue has been gaining momentum in recent years with the accelerated development of novel genetic and genomic techniques and resources. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Cogni et al. (2016) address the genetic basis of resistance to two viruses in Drosophila melanogaster using a panel of recombinant inbred lines with unprecedented resolution allowing detection of rare alleles and/or alleles of small effect. The study confirms the role of previously identified genes of major effect and adds novel regions with minor effect to the genetic basis of Drosophila resistance to the Drosophila C virus or the sigma virus. Additional analyses reveal the absence of cross-resistance and of epistasis between the various genomic regions. This detailed information on the genetic architecture of host resistance constitutes an important step towards the understanding of both the physiology of antiviral immunity and the evolution of host-parasite interactions.
Wilson's disease (WD) typically manifests in children and young adults, with little knowledge of its late-onset forms. In this study, we performed a retrospective cohort study of 105 WD patients (99 index cases, 6 siblings) with an onset age ≥35 years. We compared 99 index late-onset patients with 1237 early-onset patients and analyzed the ATP7B variant penetrance referring to the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD).
Bacterial leaf blight (BLB) caused by pv. () has shown a high incidence rate in rice fields in recent years. Rice resistance breeding is considered as the most effective method for achieving economical and sustainable management of BLB disease.
Down syndrome (DS) is a common genetic condition affecting people worldwide. It involves cognitive disabilities for which there are no drug therapies. The Ts65Dn mouse model of DS shows cognitive impairment due to a reduction in neuron number and connectivity as well as excessive neuronal activity, as GABA antagonist treatment restores memory in these mice.
Introduction And Objectives: Isolated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (IHH) may be associated with pituitary gland and olfactory system disorders. We aimed to correlate findings of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the pituitary gland and olfactory system in IHH patients with the patients' olfactory phenotype.
Patients And Methods: The present research was a single-center retrospective case-control study.
Two or more protein ligands may compete against each other to interact transiently with a protein receptor. While this is a ubiquitous phenomenon in cell signaling, existing technologies cannot identify its kinetic complexity because specific subpopulations of binding events of different ligands are hidden in the averaging process in an ensemble. In addition, the limited time resolution of prevailing methods makes detecting and discriminating binding events among diverse interacting partners challenging.
