16 research outputs found
Gene content evolution in the arthropods
Arthropods comprise the largest and most diverse phylum on Earth and play vital roles in nearly every ecosystem. Their diversity stems in part from variations on a conserved body plan, resulting from and recorded in adaptive changes in the genome. Dissection of the genomic record of sequence change enables broad questions regarding genome evolution to be addressed, even across hyper-diverse taxa within arthropods.
Using 76 whole genome sequences representing 21 orders spanning more than 500 million years of arthropod evolution, we document changes in gene and protein domain content and provide temporal and phylogenetic context for interpreting these innovations. We identify many novel gene families that arose early in the evolution of arthropods and during the diversification of insects into modern orders. We reveal unexpected variation in patterns of DNA methylation across arthropods and examples of gene family and protein domain evolution coincident with the appearance of notable phenotypic and physiological adaptations such as flight, metamorphosis, sociality, and chemoperception.
These analyses demonstrate how large-scale comparative genomics can provide broad new insights into the genotype to phenotype map and generate testable hypotheses about the evolution of animal diversity
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Electron energy spectra, fluxes, and day-night asymmetries of boron-8 solar neutrinos from the 391-day salt phase sno data set
Results are reported from the complete salt phase of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory experiment in which NaCl was dissolved in the D_2O target. The addition of salt enhanced the signal from neutron capture, as compared to the pure D_2O detector. By making a statistical separation of charged-current events from other types based on event-isotropy criteria, the effective electron recoil energy spectrum has been extracted. In units of 106 cm-2 s-1, the total flux of active-flavor neutrinos from 8B decay in the Sun is found to be 4.94+0.21_-0.21(stat)+0.38_-0.34(syst) and the integral flux of electron neutrinos for an undistorted 8B spectrum is 1.68+0.06_-0.06(stat)+0.08_-0.09(syst); the signal from (nu_x,e) elastic scattering is equivalent to an electron-neutrino flux of 2.35+0.22-0.22(stat)+0.15_-0.15(syst). These results are consistent with those expected for neutrino oscillations with the so-called Large Mixing Angle parameters, and also with an undistorted spectrum. A search for matter-enhancement effects in the Earth through a possible day-night asymmetry in the charged-current integral rate is consistent with no asymmetry. Including results from other experiments, the best-fit values for two-neutrino mixing parameters are Delta m2 = (8.0+0.6_-0.4) x 10-5 eV2 and theta = 33.9 +2.4_-2.2 degrees