118,352 results match your criteria: "Evolution and Diversity; Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre[Affiliation]"

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has gained significant attention as a potential therapeutic tool in stroke rehabilitation, promoting neuroplasticity and enhancing motor and cognitive recovery. Despite growing research, the field's evolution and key trends remain underexplored. This study aims to perform a bibliographic analysis of publications related to tDCS and stroke rehabilitation to assess the growth of the field.

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Structure-based self-supervised learning enables ultrafast protein stability prediction upon mutation.

Innovation (Camb)

January 2025

AIM Center, College of Life Sciences and Technology, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Predicting free energy changes (ΔΔG) is essential for enhancing our understanding of protein evolution and plays a pivotal role in protein engineering and pharmaceutical development. While traditional methods offer valuable insights, they are often constrained by computational speed and reliance on biased training datasets. These constraints become particularly evident when aiming for accurate ΔΔG predictions across a diverse array of protein sequences.

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Cancer phylogenetic inference using copy number alterations detected from DNA sequencing data.

Cancer Pathog Ther

January 2025

School of Biosciences and Medicine, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK.

Cancer is an evolutionary process involving the accumulation of diverse somatic mutations and clonal evolution over time. Phylogenetic inference from samples obtained from an individual patient offers a powerful approach to unraveling the intricate evolutionary history of cancer and provides insights that can inform cancer treatment. Somatic copy number alterations (CNAs) are important in cancer evolution and are often used as markers, alone or with other somatic mutations, for phylogenetic inferences, particularly in low-coverage DNA sequencing data.

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Bryophytes represent a diverse and species-rich group of plants, characterized by a remarkable array of morphological variations. Due to their significant ecological and economic roles worldwide, accurate identification of bryophyte taxa is crucial. However, the variability in morphological traits often complicates their proper identification and subsequent commercial utilization.

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The evolution of genetic exploration tools, from laborious methods like radiationinduced mutations to the transformative CRISPR-Cas9 system, has fundamentally reshaped genetic research and gene editing capabilities. This journey, initiated by foundational techniques such as ZFNs and TALENs and culminating in the groundbreaking work of Doudna and Charpentier in 2012, has ushered in an era of precise DNA alteration and profound insights into gene functions. The CRISPR/Cas9 system uses the Cas9 enzyme and guides RNA (gRNA) to precisely target and cleave DNA, with subsequent repair via error-prone NHEJ or precise HDR, enabling versatile gene editing.

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Flower colour contrast, 'spectral purity' and a red herring.

Plant Biol (Stuttg)

January 2025

Department of Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.

Nature offers a bewildering diversity of flower colours. Understanding the ecology and evolution of this fantastic floral diversity requires knowledge about the visual systems of their natural observers, such as insect pollinators. The key question is how flower colour and pattern can be measured and represented to characterise the signals that are relevant to pollinators.

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Prairie wetland ponds on the Great Plains of North America offer a diverse array of geochemical scenarios that can be informative about their impact on microbial communities. These ecosystems offer invaluable ecological services while experiencing significant stressors, primarily through drainage and climate change. In this first study systematically combining environmental conditions with microbial community composition to identify various niches in prairie wetland ponds, sediments had higher microbial abundance but lower phylogenetic diversity in ponds with lower concentrations of dissolved organic carbon ([DOC]; 10-18 mg/L) and sulfate ([SO ]; 37-58 mg/L) in water.

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Droplet evaporation on solid substrates is a ubiquitous phenomenon and is relevant in many natural and industrial processes. Whereas it has been reported that the evaporation process is sped up on soft substrates compared with that on hard substrates, no attempt has been made in exploring how substrate stretching affects droplet evaporation and evaporative deposition patterns. Here, we systematically investigate the contact line dynamics of droplets evaporating on substrates with different stiffnesses and stretching ratios and the structures of the evaporative deposition patterns of nanoparticles.

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Background: Human noroviruses are the major cause of acute gastroenteritis and exhibit considerable genetic diversity. Next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis based on environmental surveillance has been proved to be an effective method in norovirus surveillance.

Methods: Between January 2019 and December 2021, 36 sewage samples were collected and analyzed using real-time quantitative PCR to detect noroviruses.

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Exploring diazotrophic diversity: unveiling Nif core distribution and evolutionary patterns in nitrogen-fixing organisms.

BMC Genomics

January 2025

Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence Applied to Bioinformatics, Professional and Technical Education Sector - SEPT, UFPR, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.

Background: Diazotrophs carry out biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) using the nitrogenase enzyme complex (NEC), which relies on nitrogenase encoded by nif genes. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) and gene duplications have created significant diversity among these genes, making it challenging to identify potential diazotrophs. Previous studies have established a minimal set of Nif proteins, known as the Nif core, which includes NifH, NifD, NifK, NifE, NifN, and NifB.

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Two novel entomopathogenic fungal species of Lecanicillium isolated from soil in China.

BMC Microbiol

January 2025

College of Plant Protection, National Key Laboratory of Green Pesticide, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, 510642, China.

The genus Lecanicillium was established in 2001 based on the type species Lecanicillium lecani (former, Verticillium lecani), which is an important entomopathogenic fungus. To date, more than thirty species in the genus have been reported, but much more are waiting to discover. In this study, two novel species isolated from soil in east China were identified.

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A gene within a single subclade of NCED genes is triggered in response to both, short- and long-term dehydration treatments, in three model dicot species. During dehydration, some plants can rapidly synthesise the stress hormone abscisic acid (ABA) in leaves within 20 min, triggering the closure of stomata and limiting further water loss. This response is associated with significant transcriptional upregulation of Nine-cis-Epoxycarotenoid Dioxygenase (NCED) genes, which encode the enzyme considered to be rate-limiting in ABA biosynthesis.

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Polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) are pervasive environmental contaminants derived from diverse sources including pyrogenic (e.g., combustion processes), petrogenic (e.

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Short-term evolutionary implications of an introgressed size-determining supergene in a vulnerable population.

Nat Commun

January 2025

Florida Museum of Natural History, Dickinson Hall, 1659 Museum Road, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA.

The Thorny Skate (Amblyraja radiata) is a vulnerable species displaying a discrete size-polymorphism in the northwest Atlantic Ocean (NWA). We conducted whole genome sequencing of samples collected across its range. Genetic diversity was similar at all sampled sites, but we discovered a ~ 31 megabase bi-allelic supergene associated with the size polymorphism, with the larger size allele having introgressed in the last ~160,000 years B.

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Cross-Cultural Sense-Making of Global Health Crises: A Text Mining Study of Public Opinions on Social Media Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Developed and Developing Economies.

J Med Internet Res

January 2025

Unitat de Recerca i Innovació, Gerència d'Atenció Primària i a la Comunitat de la Catalunya Central, Institut Català de la Salut, Sant Fruitós de Bages, Spain.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped social dynamics, fostering reliance on social media for information, connection, and collective sense-making. Understanding how citizens navigate a global health crisis in varying cultural and economic contexts is crucial for effective crisis communication.

Objective: This study examines the evolution of citizen collective sense-making during the COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing social media discourse across Italy, the United Kingdom, and Egypt, representing diverse economic and cultural contexts.

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Despite growing awareness of their importance in soil ecology, the genetic and physiological traits of bacterial predators are still relatively poorly understood. In the course of a predator evolution experiment, we identified a class of genotypes leading to enhanced predation against diverse species. RNA-seq analysis demonstrated that this phenotype is linked to the constitutive activation of a predation-specific program.

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Heterocytes, specialized cells for nitrogen fixation in cyanobacteria, are surrounded by heterocyte glycolipids (HGs), which contribute to protection of the nitrogenase enzyme from oxygen. Diverse HGs preserve in the sediment and have been widely used as evidence of past nitrogen fixation, and structural variation has been suggested to preserve taxonomic information and reflect paleoenvironmental conditions. Here, by comprehensive HG identification and screening of HG biosynthetic gene clusters throughout cyanobacteria, we reconstruct the convergent evolutionary history of HG structure, in which different clades produce the same HGs.

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Combining radio-telemetry and radar measurements to test optimal foraging in an aerial insectivore bird.

Elife

January 2025

Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology and Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.

Optimal foraging theory posits that foragers adjust their movements based on prey abundance to optimize food intake. While extensively studied in terrestrial and marine environments, aerial foraging has remained relatively unexplored due to technological limitations. This study, uniquely combining BirdScan-MR1 radar and the Advanced Tracking and Localization of Animals in Real-Life Systems biotelemetry system, investigates the foraging dynamics of Little Swifts () in response to insect movements over Israel's Hula Valley.

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Four halophilic archaeal strains were isolated from sea salt and a saline lake in China. Based on phylogenetic and phylogenomic analyses, the four strains are related to the genera of Halobellus, Halobaculum, and Halorarum within the family Haloferacaceae. The four strains possess genes responsible for carotenoid synthesis, maintenance of a high internal salt concentration, as well as diverse enzymes with biotechnological potential.

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Background: Paeonia lactiflora Pall., a member of Paeoniaceae family, is a medicinal herb widely used in traditional Chinese medicine. Chloroplasts are multifunctional organelles containing distinct genetic material.

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Recombination contributes substantially to the genetic diversity of HIV-1. Here we reported a novel HIV-1 recombinant detected from a Chinese labor who had been to Uganda as an immigrant worker using nanopore sequencing. Near full-length genome (NFLG) phylogenetic analysis showed that the novel HIV-1 recombinant HIV-sd1801 stood in a distinct branch between the CRF130_A1B/CRF131_A1B and CRF50_A1D/CRF84_A1D reference sequences.

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Introduction: Since its synthesis in 1962, ketamine has been widely used in diverse medical contexts, from anesthesia to treatment-resistant depression. However, interpretations of ketamine's subjective effects remain polarized. Biomedical frameworks typically construe the drug's experiential effects as dissociative or psychotomimetic, while psychedelic paradigms emphasize the potential therapeutic merits of these non-ordinary states.

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The prominence of binuclear catalysts underlines the need for the design and development of diverse bifunctional ligand frameworks that exhibit tunable electronic and structural properties. Such strategies enable metal-metal and ligand-metal cooperation towards catalytic applications, improve catalytic activity, and are essential for advancing multi-electron transfers for catalytic application. Hereby, we present the synthesis, crystal structure, and photocatalytic properties of a binuclear Ni(II) complex, [Ni2(1,10-phenanthroline)2(2-sulfidophenolate)2] (1), which crystallizes in the centrosymmetric triclinic system (P-1) showing extensive intra- and inter- non-coordinated interactions.

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Genetic insights into the first detection of Paracoccus marginatus (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) in Australia.

J Insect Sci

January 2025

Biosecurity and Animal Welfare, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Berrimah Farm Science Precinct, Darwin, Northern Territory 0810, Australia.

Species spread in a new environment is often associated with founders' effect, and reduced effective population size and genetic diversity. However, reduced genetic diversity does not necessarily translate to low establishment and spread potential. Paracoccus marginatus Williams and Granara de Willink is a polyphagous pest that has invaded 4 continents in around 34 years.

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[The role of volatile organic compounds in plant-insect communication].

Biol Aujourdhui

January 2025

Sorbonne Université, Institut d'Écologie et des Sciences de l'Environnement de Paris, 4 place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France - Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France.

Insects and flowering plants are the most abundant and diverse multicellular organisms on Earth, accounting for 75% of known species. Their evolution has been largely interdependent since the so-called Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution (100-50 Mya), when the explosion of plant diversity stimulated the evolution of pollinating and herbivorous insects. Plant-insect interactions rely heavily on chemical communication via volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

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