Activating and inhibiting connections in biological network dynamics.

abstract：:In this article, I review the results of studies on the origin of life distinct from the popular RNA world hypothesis. The alternate scenario postulates the origin of the first bimolecular genetic system (a polynucleotide gene and a polypeptide processive polymerase) with simultaneous replication and translation and i...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Altstein AD

更新日期：2015-11-26 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:Microbial communities play a crucial role in our environment and may influence human health tremendously. Despite being the place where human interaction is most abundant we still know little about the urban microbiome. This is highlighted by the large amount of unclassified DNA reads found in urban metageno...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Gerner SM,Rattei T,Graf AB

更新日期：2018-10-12 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:Microscopic examination of living cells often reveals that cells from some cell strains appear to be in a permanent state of disarray without obvious reason. In all probability such a disorderly state affects cell functioning. The aim of this study was to establish whether a disorderly state could occur that...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Simons JW

更新日期：2006-04-02 00:00:00

abstract：:The concept of developmental constraints has been central to understand the role of development in morphological evolution. Developmental constraints are classically defined as biases imposed by development on the distribution of morphological variation.This opinion article argues that the concepts of developmental co...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Salazar-Ciudad I

更新日期：2021-01-09 00:00:00

abstract：:Functional biologists, like Claude Bernard, ask "How?", meaning that they investigate the mechanisms underlying the emergence of biological functions (proximal causes), while evolutionary biologists, like Charles Darwin, asks "Why?", meaning that they search the causes of adaptation, survival and evolution (remote cau...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Vianello A,Passamonti S

更新日期：2016-02-09 00:00:00

abstract：INTRODUCTION:Three major outer membrane protein genes of Escherichia coli, ompF, ompC, and ompA respond to stress factors. Transcripts from these genes are regulated by the small non-coding RNAs micF, micC, and micA, respectively. Here we examine Photorhabdus luminescens, an organism that has a different habitat from E...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Papamichail D,Delihas N

更新日期：2006-05-22 00:00:00

abstract：UNLABELLED:In this work we review past articles that have mathematically studied cancer heterogeneity and the impact of this heterogeneity on the structure of optimal therapy. We look at past works on modeling how heterogeneous tumors respond to radiotherapy, and take a particularly close look at how the optimal radiot...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Badri H,Leder K

更新日期：2016-08-23 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:Our current understanding of evolution is so tightly linked to template-dependent replication of DNA and RNA molecules that the old idea from Oparin of a self-reproducing 'garbage bag' ('coacervate') of chemicals that predated fully-fledged cell-like entities seems to be farfetched to most scientists today. ...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Vasas V,Fernando C,Santos M,Kauffman S,Szathmáry E

更新日期：2012-01-05 00:00:00

abstract：:LINE-1 (L1) retrotransposons are repetitive elements in mammalian genomes. They are capable of synthesizing DNA on their own RNA templates by harnessing reverse transcriptase (RT) that they encode. Abundantly expressed full-length L1s and their RT are found to globally influence gene expression profiles, differentiati...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Belan E

更新日期：2013-09-13 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:Telocytes (TCs) is an interstitial cell with extremely long and thin telopodes (Tps) with thin segments (podomers) and dilations (podoms) to interact with neighboring cells. TCs have been found in different organs, while there is still a lack of TCs-specific biomarkers to distinguish TCs from the other cells...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Wang J,Ye L,Jin M,Wang X

更新日期：2015-03-11 00:00:00

abstract：:tRNA-derived RNA fragments (tRFs) are 19mer small RNAs that associate with Argonaute (AGO) proteins in humans. However, in plants, it is unknown if tRFs bind with AGO proteins. Here, using public deep sequencing libraries of immunoprecipitated Argonaute proteins (AGO-IP) and bioinformatics approaches, we identified th...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Loss-Morais G,Waterhouse PM,Margis R

更新日期：2013-02-12 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:The CRISPR-Cas systems of adaptive antivirus immunity are present in most archaea and many bacteria, and provide resistance to specific viruses or plasmids by inserting fragments of foreign DNA into the host genome and then utilizing transcripts of these spacers to inactivate the cognate foreign genome. The ...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Berezovskaya FS,Wolf YI,Koonin EV,Karev GP

更新日期：2014-07-02 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:While the local-mode HMMER3 is notable for its massive speed improvement, the slower glocal-mode HMMER2 is more exact for domain annotation by enforcing full domain-to-sequence alignments. Since a unit of domain necessarily implies a unit of function, local-mode HMMER3 alone remains insufficient for precise ...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Yap CK,Eisenhaber B,Eisenhaber F,Wong WC

更新日期：2016-11-29 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:Long-lived marine megavertebrates (e.g. sharks, turtles, mammals, and seabirds) are inherently vulnerable to anthropogenic mortality. Although some mathematical models have been applied successfully to manage these animals, more detailed treatments are often needed to assess potential drivers of population d...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： White ER,Nagy JD,Gruber SH

更新日期：2014-11-18 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:The gammadelta T cells serve as early immune defense against certain encountered microbes. Only a few gammadelta T cell-recognized ligands from microbial antigens have been identified so far and the mechanisms by which gammadelta T cells recognize these ligands remain unknown. Here we explored the mechanism ...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Cui Y,Kang L,Cui L,He W

更新日期：2009-12-01 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:While all codons that specify amino acids are universally recognized by tRNA molecules, codons signaling termination of translation are recognized by proteins known as class-I release factors (RF). In most eukaryotes and archaea a single RF accomplishes termination at all three stop codons. In most bacteria,...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Baranov PV,Vestergaard B,Hamelryck T,Gesteland RF,Nyborg J,Atkins JF

更新日期：2006-09-13 00:00:00

abstract：UNLABELLED:Pseudogenes arise from the decay of gene copies following either RNA-mediated duplication (processed pseudogenes) or DNA-mediated duplication (nonprocessed pseudogenes). Here, we show that long protein-coding genes tend to produce more nonprocessed pseudogenes than short genes, whereas the opposite is true f...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Khachane AN,Harrison PM

更新日期：2009-10-06 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:The N-end rule pathway is a part of the ubiquitin-dependent proteolytic system wherein N-recognin proteins recognize the amino terminal degradation signals (N-degrons) of the substrate. The type 1 N-degron recognizing UBR-box domain of the eukaryotic Arg/N-end rule pathway is known to possess a novel three-z...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Kaur G,Subramanian S

更新日期：2015-07-17 00:00:00

abstract：UNLABELLED:Primase and GINS are essential factors for chromosomal DNA replication in eukaryotic and archaeal cells. Here we describe a previously undetected relationship between the C-terminal domain of the catalytic subunit (PriS) of archaeal primase and the B-domains of the archaeo-eukaryotic GINS proteins in the for...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Swiatek A,Macneill SA

更新日期：2010-04-12 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:The costs and benefits of spliceosomal introns in eukaryotes have not been established. One recognized effect of intron splicing is its known enhancement of gene expression. However, the mechanism regulating such splicing-mediated expression enhancement has not been defined. Previous studies have shown that ...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Niu DK,Yang YF

更新日期：2011-05-18 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:Currently a huge amount of protein-protein interaction data is available therefore extracting meaningful ones are a challenging task. In a protein-protein interaction network, hubs are considered as key proteins maintaining function and stability of the network. Therefore, studying protein-protein complexes ...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Choura M,Rebaï A

更新日期：2011-10-05 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:Synthesis of proteins is based on the genetic code - a nearly universal assignment of codons to amino acids (aas). A major challenge to the understanding of the origins of this assignment is the archetypal "key-lock vs. frozen accident" dilemma. Here we re-examine this dilemma in light of 1) the fundamental ...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Rodin AS,Szathmáry E,Rodin SN

更新日期：2011-02-22 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:The origin of the selective nuclear protein import machinery, which consists of nuclear pore complexes and adaptor molecules interacting with the nuclear localization signals (NLSs) of cargo molecules, is one of the most important events in the evolution of eukaryotic cells. How proteins were selected for im...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Lisitsyna OM,Kurnaeva MA,Arifulin EA,Shubina MY,Musinova YR,Mironov AA,Sheval EV

更新日期：2020-04-28 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:This essay highlights critical aspects of the plausibility of pre-Darwinian evolution. It is based on a critical review of some better-known open, far-from-equilibrium system-based scenarios supposed to explain processes that took place before Darwinian evolution had emerged and that resulted in the origin o...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Tessera M

更新日期：2018-09-21 00:00:00

abstract：:The provenance and biochemical roles of eukaryotic MORC proteins have remained poorly understood since the discovery of their prototype MORC1, which is required for meiotic nuclear division in animals. The MORC family contains a combination of a gyrase, histidine kinase, and MutL (GHKL) and S5 domains that together co...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Iyer LM,Abhiman S,Aravind L

更新日期：2008-03-17 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:The origin of eukaryotic cells was an important transition in evolution. The factors underlying the origin and evolutionary success of the eukaryote lineage are still discussed. One camp argues that mitochondria were essential for eukaryote origin because of the unique configuration of internalized bioenerge...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Gerlitz M,Knopp M,Kapust N,Xavier JC,Martin WF

更新日期：2018-10-03 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:An evolutionary classification of genes from sequenced genomes that distinguishes between orthologs and paralogs is indispensable for genome annotation and evolutionary reconstruction. Shortly after multiple genome sequences of bacteria, archaea, and unicellular eukaryotes became available, an attempt on suc...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Makarova KS,Sorokin AV,Novichkov PS,Wolf YI,Koonin EV

更新日期：2007-11-27 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:Glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) is a ubiquitously expressed serine/threonine (Ser/Thr) kinase comprising two isoforms, GSK-3α and GSK-3β. Both enzymes are similarly inactivated by serine phosphorylation (GSK-3α at Ser21 and GSK-3β at Ser9) and activated by tyrosine phosphorylation (GSK-3α at Tyr279 and GS...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Campa VM,Kypta RM

更新日期：2011-01-24 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:In eukaryotes, RNA interference (RNAi) is a major mechanism of defense against viruses and transposable elements as well of regulating translation of endogenous mRNAs. The RNAi systems recognize the target RNA molecules via small guide RNAs that are completely or partially complementary to a region of the ta...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Makarova KS,Wolf YI,van der Oost J,Koonin EV

更新日期：2009-08-25 00:00:00

abstract：BACKGROUND:Chlamydia trachomatis is an obligate intracellular bacterial parasite, which causes several severe and debilitating diseases in humans. This study uses comparative genomic analyses of 12 complete published C. trachomatis genomes to assess the contribution of recombination and selection in this pathogen and t...

journal_title：Biology direct

authors： Joseph SJ,Didelot X,Gandhi K,Dean D,Read TD

更新日期：2011-05-26 00:00:00