Category: Uncategorized

BEHAVIORAL FEVER. "Zebrafish display behavioural fever that acts to promote extensive and highly specific temperature-dependent changes in the brain transcriptome. The observed coupling of the immune response to fever acts at the gene–environment level to promote a robust, highly specific time-dependent anti-viral response that, under viral infection, increases survival." https://lnkd.in/enUcngE View in LinkedIn

PLAN OR PROCESS? Enrico Coen: "Organisms are not simply manufactured according to a set of instructions. There is no easy way to separate instructions from the process of carrying them out, to distinguish plan from execution." (Professor Nobel in his book, the Music of Life). https://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/denis-noble View in LinkedIn

FUNCTIONALITY. "There is no genetic program. The program is the functionality." https://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/denis-noble View in LinkedIn

RNA ALTERNATIVE VIEW. "We propose the alternative concept of qualitative RNA sociology that underlies the communicative competences of consortia of RNA stem-loop structures in constituting life." https://lnkd.in/eUYvi8e View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS two weekends on the parasite-host co-evolution. If evolution is the result of a broad and changing normal distribution curve driven by mutation and other factors, with selection at its edges for the best fit, then it gives credence to the axiom that a million monkeys with typewriters and Aeons of time could end up with a Shakespearean play. View in LinkedIn

CIRCADIAN CLOCK MIMICS. "Insect behaviour is controlled in a 24-h cycle by the circadian system, allowing the organism to respond to rhythmic environmental changes, related to for example light, temperature and food availability. Biernat et al. (2012) showed that a DNA repair protein (PHR2) encoded by the baculovirus Chrysodeixis chalcites nucleopolyhedrovirus can mimic the function of mammalian cryptochromes, essential regulators of the circadian clock." https://lnkd.in/e4DPgex View in LinkedIn

ALTERED NEUROTRANSMITTERS IN HOSTS. "Locomotion in invertebrates also involves the action of several monoamine molecules, including dopamine, serotonin and octopamine that may act as neurotransmitters or neurohormones. In several cases of behavioural manipulation, neurotransmitter levels were found to be altered." https://lnkd.in/e4DPgex View in LinkedIn

PARASITIC GENE INDUCTION IN HOST. "In the freshwater snail Lymniae stagnalis, increased expression of the npy gene is observed in the CNS upon parasitization by the trematode Trichobilharzia ocellata, a parasite that alters egg-laying behaviour of its host." https://lnkd.in/e4DPgex View in LinkedIn

"WOLBACHIA are common intracellular bacteria that are found in arthropods and nematodes. These alphaproteobacteria endosymbionts are transmitted vertically through host eggs and alter host biology in diverse ways. Within arthropods, Wolbachia is a reproductive parasite, manipulating the reproductive biology of hosts to increase its own transmission. Although usually vertically inherited, Wolbachia can also move horizontally across species boundaries, resulting in a widespread and global distribution in diverse invertebrate hosts." https://lnkd.in/ekadN4H View in LinkedIn

SELECTIVE CONSTRAINT. "These findings imply that the CNGs are subject to a very strong and continual selective constraint, enabling them to remain largely unchanged for as long as 300 million years." (CNG = conserved nongenic (non-gene) sequences). https://lnkd.in/eFvUyrd View in LinkedIn