Tag: natural selection

No endogenized phage gene in Helicobacter pylori genome

January 23, 2024

Bacteriophage attacks their corresponding host bacterial species in order to gain access to the host cell’s replication machinery and nutritional sources for building more phages, and thus, maintain the phage population in the environment. Hence, possibility exists that each bacterial species will have a corresponding phage that helps to control its population. Presence of the … More No endogenized phage gene in Helicobacter pylori genome

Percentage of Neanderthal genes in human genome may have decreased with time and evolution to the present day

November 3, 2023

It is common notion that there is about 2% Neanderthal DNA in the nuclear genome of modern humans. However, this number may be higher in the distant past. Due to evolution and changes to Earth’s climate and nutritional environment, Neanderthal DNA may encode genes that are no longer useful for survival in the modern world, … More Percentage of Neanderthal genes in human genome may have decreased with time and evolution to the present day

Use of neutral genes for tracking evolutionary history may lead to false conclusions

November 1, 2023

Natural selection is the basis for evolution to happen. Specifically, mutations in genes provide differentiated function to proteins, and allow natural selection to pick the mutations that confer the most suitable functional properties under a particular set of environmental and nutritional conditions. Hence, are genes that are under selection useful for tracking the evolutionary trajectory … More Use of neutral genes for tracking evolutionary history may lead to false conclusions

RNA viruses evolve more rapidly than DNA viruses

November 20, 2020

Viruses can generally be classified as DNA and RNA viruses, which differ in their genetic makeup. During infection, DNA viruses inject DNA into the host cells, which is transcribed to mRNA for downstream protein translation. On the other hand, RNA viruses inject RNA into host cells, which must be reverse-transcribed into DNA, prior to transcription … More RNA viruses evolve more rapidly than DNA viruses

Cell-based platforms are not ideal for targeted evolution of individual enzyme

June 1, 2020

Evolution is a common tool for developing new enzymes or new traits (phenotypes) in cells. However, a whole cell system may not be suitable as platform for developing enzymes as natural selection pressure acts on the entire cell with its set of intertwined metabolic network. To understand the problem more concretely, take as an example, … More Cell-based platforms are not ideal for targeted evolution of individual enzyme

Much of a yeast promoter may be redundant

December 14, 2019

Promoters in yeast are typically longer than those in bacterial species. Hence, in synthetic biology applications, plasmids constructed for use in yeast would contain long stretches of promoter together with the target gene. Given that each gene in yeast requires a dedicated promoter unlike the case in bacterial species where a single promoter could help … More Much of a yeast promoter may be redundant

Conserved mass peaks in mass spectra of bacterial species

February 2, 2018

Conserved mass peaks were found in mass spectra of individual bacterial species that highlighted a deep biological basis in the use of mass spectrometry for identifying bacteria. Specifically, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) could profile biomolecules (mostly proteins) from bacterial cells that result in a mass spectrum useful for identification purposes. While … More Conserved mass peaks in mass spectra of bacterial species

Degeneracy in protein sequence meant that evolutionary conservation occurred at the structure level

December 12, 2017

Given the importance of many proteins to the maintenance of cellular processes, the structures of the proteins are highly conserved independent of the sequence information at the amino acid and nucleotide level. This raises an important question in evolutionary biology: the direction in which natural selection exerts its effect in selecting for specific information bits … More Degeneracy in protein sequence meant that evolutionary conservation occurred at the structure level