Representatives of only four well-characterized bacterial phyla were isolated from a pasture soil by using liquid serial dilution culture. In contrast, members of Acidobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, and Gemmatimonadetes and of other poorly represented bacterial lineages were isolated in earlier experiments with solidified versions of the same media. We conclude that, contrary to expectation, liquid serial dilution… [Read More]

Motivation: The power of multi-sequence comparison for biological discovery is well established. The need for new capabilities to visualize and compare cross-species alignment data is intensified by the growing number of genomic sequence datasets being generated for an ever-increasing number of organisms. To be efficient these visualization algorithms must support the ability to accommodate consistently… [Read More]

The Indochinese box turtle Cuora galbinifrons is a polytypic, critically endangered species from Vietnam, Laos, and Hainan Island, China. We analyze up to 1790 bp of mitochondrial DNA under maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood criteria to test if the five historically recognized subspecies represent evolutionary lineages, and to elucidate the relationship of C galbinifrons to… [Read More]

We sequenced the entire mitochondrial genome of the jumping spider Habronattus oregonensis of the arachnid order Araneae (Arthropoda: Chelicerata). A number of unusual features distinguish this genome from other chelicerate and arthropod mitochondrial genomes. Most of the transfer RNA (tRNA) gene sequences are greatly reduced in size and cannot be folded into typical cloverleaf-shaped secondary… [Read More]

Expression profiling offers a potential high-throughput phenotype screen for mutant mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells. We have assessed the ability of expression arrays to distinguish among heterozygous mutant ES cell lines and to accurately reflect the normal function of the mutated genes. Two ES cell lines hemizygous for overlapping regions of mouse Chromosome (Chr) 5… [Read More]

The evolutionary history of the largest salamander family (Plethodontidae) is characterized by extreme morphological homoplasy. Analysis of the mechanisms generating such homoplasy requires an independent molecular phylogeny. To this end, we sequenced 24 complete mitochondrial genomes (22 plethodontids and two outgroup taxa), added data for three species from GenBank, and performed partitioned and unpartitioned Bayesian,… [Read More]

Squamate reptiles (snakes, lizards, and amphisbaenians) serve as model systems for evolutionary studies of a variety of morphological and behavioral traits, and phylogeny is crucial to many generalizations derived from such studies. Specifically, the traditional dichotomy between Iguania ( anoles, iguanas, chameleons, etc.) and Scleroglossa ( skinks, geckos, snakes, etc.) has been correlated with major… [Read More]

The recent completion of the human genome sequence has enabled the identification of a large fraction of our gene catalogue and their physical chromosomal position. However, current efforts lag at defining the cis-regulatory sequences that control the spatial and temporal patterns of each gene’s expression. This task remains difficult due to our lack of knowledge… [Read More]

Microbial communities are vital in the functioning of all ecosystems; however, most microorganisms are uncultivated, and their roles in natural systems are unclear. Here, using random shotgun sequencing of DNA from a natural acidophilic biofilm, we report reconstruction of near-complete genomes of Leptospirillum group II and Ferroplasma type II, and partial recovery of three other… [Read More]