The marine unicellular cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus is the smallest-known oxygen-evolving autotroph(1). It numerically dominates the phytoplankton in the tropical and subtropical oceans(2,3), and is responsible for a significant fraction of global photosynthesis. Here we compare the genomes of two Prochlorococcus strains that span the largest evolutionary distance within the Prochlorococcus lineage(4) and that have different minimum,… [Read More]

Recent morphological and molecular evidence has changed interpretations of arthropod phylogeny and evolution. Here we compare complete mitochondrial genomes to show that Collembola, a wingless group traditionally considered as basal to all insects, appears instead to constitute a separate evolutionary lineage that branched much earlier than the separation of many crustaceans and insects and independently… [Read More]

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Marine unicellular cyanobacteria are responsible for an estimated 20-40% of chlorophyll biomass and carbon fixation in the oceans(1). Here we have sequenced and analysed the 2.4-megabase genome of Synechococcus sp. strain WH8102, revealing some of the ways that these organisms have adapted to their largely oligotrophic environment. WH8102 uses organic nitrogen and phosphorus sources and… [Read More]

Doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI) provides an intriguing system for addressing aspects of molecular evolution and intermolecular recombination of mitochondrial DNA. For this reason, a large sequence analysis has been performed on Tapes philippinarum (Bivalvia, Veneridae), which has mitochondrial DNA heteroplasmy that is consistent with a DUI. The sequences of a 9.2-kb region (containing 29 genes)… [Read More]

Large-scale public genomic sequencing efforts have provided a wealth of vertebrate sequence data poised to provide insights into mammalian biology. These include deep genomic sequence coverage of human, mouse, rat, zebrafish, and two pufferfish (Fugu rubripes and Tetraodon nigroviridis) (Aparicio et al. 2002; Lander et al. 2001; Venter et al. 2001; Waterston et al. 2002)…. [Read More]

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Apolipoprotein A5 (APOA5) is a newly described member of the apolipoprotein gene family whose initial discovery arose from comparative sequence analysis of the mammalian APOA1/C3/A4 gene cluster. Functional studies in mice indicated that alteration in the level of APOA5 significantly affected plasma triglyceride concentrations. Mice that overexpressed human APOA5 displayed significantly reduced triglycerides, whereas mice… [Read More]

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