NRMD: Nuclear Receptor Mutation Database

The NRMD is a database for nuclear receptor mutation information. It includes mutation information from SWISS-PROT/TrEMBL, several web-based mutation data resources, and data extracted from the literature in a fully automatic manner. Because it is also possible to add mutations manually, a hundred mutations were added for completeness. At present, the NRMD contains information about 893 mutations in 54 nuclear receptors. A common numbering scheme for all nuclear receptors eases the use of the information for many kinds of studies. The NRMD is freely available to academia and industry as a stand-alone version at: www.receptors.org/NR/

The use of in vitro peptide binding profiles and in silico ligand-receptor interaction profiles to describe ligand-induced conformations of the retinoid X receptor alpha ligand-binding domain

Contains fulltext : 36617.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Proportional hazard models including both sexes.

<p>Proportional hazard models including both sexes.</p

Proportional hazard models within females.

<p>Proportional hazard models within females.</p

Bill hue and fledgling production.

<p>Fledgling production (standardised by dividing it by the median fledgling production per batch, thus not corrected for differences in longevity; see main text) of males (left panel) and females (right panel) in relation to bill hue. Only in females was redder bill hue significantly associated with reproductive success (see main text).</p

Bill hue and survival.

<p>Survival of males (left panel) and females (right panel) in relation to bill hue categories (tertiles). Note that data are shown for bill hue tertiles but bill hue was entered as continuous variable in the analyses. In both sexes individuals with low redness survive worst. In females a quadratic relationship of survival with bill hue was detected (see main text).</p

Bill Redness Is Positively Associated with Reproduction and Survival in Male and Female Zebra Finches

Sexual traits can serve as honest indicators of phenotypic quality when they are costly. Brightly coloured yellow to red traits, which are pigmented by carotenoids, are relatively common in birds, and feature in sexual selection. Carotenoids have been linked to immune and antioxidant function, and the trade-off between ornamentation and these physiological functions provides a potential mechanism rendering carotenoid based signals costly. Mutual ornamentation is also common in birds and can be maintained by mutual mate choice for this ornament or by a correlated response in one sex to selection on the other sex. When selection pressures differ between the sexes this can cause intralocus sexual conflict. Sexually antagonistic selection pressures have been demonstrated for few sexual traits, and for carotenoid-dependent traits there is a single example: bill redness was found to be positively associated with survival and reproductive output in male zebra finches, but negatively so in females. We retested these associations in our captive zebra finch population without two possible limitations of this earlier study. Contrary to the earlier findings, we found no evidence for sexually antagonistic selection. In both sexes, individuals with redder bills showed higher survival. This association disappeared among the females with the reddest bills. Furthermore, females with redder bills achieved higher reproductive output. We conclude that bill redness of male and female zebra finches honestly signals phenotypic quality, and discuss the possible causes of the differences between our results and earlier findings.