Gene duplication is a major mechanism through which new genetic material is generated during molecular evolution. It can be defined as any duplication of a region of DNA that contains a gene. Gene duplications can arise as products of several types of errors in DNA replication and repair machinery as well as through fortuitous capture by selfish genetic elements. Common sources of gene duplications include ectopic recombination, retrotransposition event, aneuploidy, polyploidy, and replication slippage.
The Peninj Mandible(Peninj 1), also called Natron mandible, is the fossilized lower jaw and teeth of an australopithecine specimen, likely that of Australopithecus boisei or a similar population. It was discovered in West Lake Natron, in Ngorongoro District of Arusha Region of Tanzania by Kamoya Kimeu, Glynn Isaac, and Richard Leakey in 1964.
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and fossil organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. Although there is some evidence of life as early as 4.1 to 4.28 Ga, it remains controversial due to the possible non-biological formation of the purported fossils.
RNA polymerase IV is an enzyme that synthesizes small interfering RNA (siRNA) in plants, which silence gene expression. RNAP IV belongs to a family of enzymes that catalyze the process of transcription known as RNA Polymerases, which synthesize RNA from DNA templates. Discovered via phylogenetic studies of land plants, genes of RNAP IV are thought to have resulted from multistep evolution processes that occurred in RNA Polymerase II phylogenies. Such an evolutionary pathway is supported by the fact that RNAP IV is composed of 12 protein subunits that are either similar or identical to RNA polymerase II, and is specific to plant genomes. Via its synthesis of siRNA, RNAP IV is involved in regulation of heterochromatin formation in a process known as RNA directed DNA Methylation (RdDM).
The Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) is an independent biomedical research organisation founded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. The institute employs around 250 people from over 40 countries, who perform basic research. IMBA is located at the Vienna BioCenter (VBC) and shares facilities and scientific training programs with the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), the basic research center of Boehringer Ingelheim.
Paul Reinhard Schimmel is an American biophysical chemist and translational medicine pioneer.
David Jay Julius is an American physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate known for his work on molecular mechanisms of pain sensation and heat, including the characterization of the TRPV1 and TRPM8 receptors that detect capsaicin, menthol, and temperature. He is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
Peter D. Keightley FRS is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.
Richard Malcolm Marais is Director of the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Manchester Institute and Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of Manchester.
Jessica Polka is a biochemist and the Executive Director of ASAPbio, a non-profit initiative promoting innovation and transparency via preprints and open peer review. She was one of the organizers of a recent meeting they held on scholarly communication.
Kiyoshi Nagai was a Japanese structural biologist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge, UK. He was known for his work on the mechanism of RNA splicing and structures of the spliceosome.
Csaba Pal is a Hungarian biologist at the Biological Research Centre (BRC) in Szeged Hungary. His laboratory is part of the Synthetic and Systems Biology Unit at BRC. His research is at the interface of evolution, antibiotic resistance and genome engineering and has published over 70 scientific publications in these areas.
Pangalloanserae is a clade of birds defined in a 2001 study by Jacques Gauthier and Kevin de Queiroz as "most inclusive clade containing Galloanserae but not Neoaves". It contains crown Galloanserae as well as all stem-galloanserans.
Max Born was a widely influential German physicist and mathematician who was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pivotal role in the development of quantum mechanics. Born won the prize primarily for his contributions to the statistical interpretation of the wave function, though he is known for his work in several areas of quantum mechanics as well as solid-state physics, optics, and special relativity. Born's entry in the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society included thirty books and 330 papers.
Ervin Fodor is a British virologist of Hungarian origin born in Czechoslovakia. He is Professor of Virology holding the position of reader in experimental pathology in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. He is also a professorial fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.
Lydia W. S. Finley is an American scientist and an assistant member at the Cell Biology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. Finley is known for her contributions to understanding the metabolic underpinnings of stem cell fate.
Daniel James Frost, is a British Earth scientist, currently Professor of Experimental Geosciences at the University of Bayreuth. His research focuses on the nature of Earth's deep interior, including the chemistry of the mantle and how it led to the development of the atmosphere, and the physical and chemical processes through which planets form.
Professor Kate Trinajstic or Katherine M. Trinajstic is an Australian palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist, and winner of the Dorothy Hill Award. She is the Dean of Research, Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University.
Jay Fineberg is an Israeli physicist. He is a professor at the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is known for his work on various aspects of nonlinear physics, mainly in the fields of fracture and friction. He is an elected fellow of the American Physical Society and the Israel Physical Society.
Oliver Lawrence Phillips, is a British ecologist who specializes in tropical forests and is currently Professor of Tropical Ecology in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. He is noted for his work coordinating large-scale, collaborative research projects that study how humans have changed the world's tropical forests, and the implications for climate change.
