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TESTS FOR THE HYPOTHESIS. “It would be interesting to test whether these domains allow manipulation of reproduction across a broader host range. Interestingly, one of these domains, the ovarian tumor domain (OTU), is also found in a toxin involved in male-killing induced by the symbiont Spiroplasma poulsonii, raising the possibility that some domains could be involved in multiple forms of reproductive manipulations.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

LOSS OF FUNCTION GENES. “Firstly, these mutations tend to be on terminal branches of the gene tree. Secondly, pseudogenes rarely accumulate many loss-of-function mutations. Although this suggests that cifA and cifB pseudogenes rarely codiverge with the Wolbachia genome for long periods, it is unclear whether this results from the loss of the Wolbachia infection or through the genes being deleted from the genome, for instance, by phage excision.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

HOMOLOGY. “Given the relative homogeneity of cifA domains and the similarities of these additional cifB domains with known toxins and eukaryotic-like ankyrin proteins, it is tempting to hypothesize that they are linked to the modification function by interacting with the host rather than the binding to cifA.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

FOLLOWING THE BREADCRUMBS. “In the absence of other phenotypic effects on the host, theory predicts that the loss-of-sperm modification will lead to the loss of Wolbachia from the host population. We found that the majority of loss-of-function mutations appears to have occurred recently.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

UNRESOLVED ANSWER. “However, we found no evidence for this, and frequently paralogs within the same genome are closely related. We would argue that this does not mean that we should discount the hypothesis that cif paralogs accumulate within the same genome because they encode bidirectionally incompatible CI factors.” (CI = cytoplasmic incompatibility). https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

“Pentatomidae is a family of insects belonging to the order Hemiptera, generally called shield bugs or stink bugs. Pentatomidae is the largest family in the superfamily Pentatomoidea, and contains around 900 genera and over 4700 species.” https://lnkd.in/dzfABjG View in LinkedIn

JUPITER’S EXTREME H2O. “Rearrangements of those hydrogen bonds, which take place as temperature and pressure are varied, give rise to a large family of complex network structures beyond the “ordinary” hexagonal form of ice. Water molecules can form cages around hydrophobic species such as methane to form clathrate hydrates.” https://lnkd.in/dKBrrak View in LinkedIn

NEW PAPER ON LUMINOUS QUAZARS. “As the most luminous non-transient objects that can be observed in the early universe, high-redshift quasars are indispensable tracers of early black hole growth, the formation of the first massive galaxies in the universe, and the history of cosmic reionization.” https://lnkd.in/devi4ZN View in LinkedIn

OCCAM’S RAZOR. “Attempts to understand the release of quantum information from macroscopic black holes in terms of quantum path integrals seem to require very exotic intermediate configurations of multiple wormholes, but these ignore the possibility of a much simpler path integral in a black hole to white hole scenario.” The end of this interesting paper. https://lnkd.in/dUKnus8 View in LinkedIn

BIG UNKNOWNS. “These theorems claim to assume nothing about the unknown behavior of quantum gravity in regions of very high curvature” inside a black hole. https://lnkd.in/dUKnus8 View in LinkedIn