Reprinted from Science Daily

Schematic of Cyanophora paradoxa. (Credit: Courtesy of Bhattacharya Lab.)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 21, 2012) — Atmospheric oxygen really took off on our planet about 2.4 billion years ago during the Great Oxygenation Event. At this key juncture of our planet’s evolution, species had either to learn to cope with this poison that was produced by photosynthesizing cyanobacteria or they went extinct. It now seems strange to think that the gas that sustains much of modern life had such a distasteful beginning.

So how and when did the ability to produce oxygen by harnessing sunlight enter the eukaryotic domain, that includes humans, plants, and most recognizable, multicellular life forms? One of the fundamental steps in the evolution of our planet was the development of photosynthesis in eukaryotes through the process of endosymbiosis.

This crucial step forward occurred about 1.6 billion years ago when a single-celled protist captured and retained a formerly free-living cyanobacterium. This process, termed primary endosymbiosis, gave rise to the plastid, which is the specialized compartment where photosynthesis takes place in cells. Endosymbiosis is now a well substantiated theory that explains how cells gained their great complexity and was made famous most recently by the work of the late biologist Lynn Margulis, best known for her theory on the origin of eukaryotic organelles.

In a paper "Cyanophora paradoxa genome elucidates origin of photosynthesis in algae and plants" that appeared this week in the journal Science, an international team led by evolutionary biologist and Rutgers University professor Debashish Bhattacharya has shed light on the early events leading to photosynthesis, the result of the sequencing of 70 million base pair nuclear genome of the one-celled alga Cyanophora.

In the world of plants, "Cyanophora is the equivalent to the lung fish, in that it maintains some primitive characteristics that make it an ideal candidate for genome sequencing," said Bhattacharya.

Bhattacharya and colleagues consider this study "the final piece of the puzzle to understand the origin of photosynthesis in eukaryotes." Basic understanding of much of the subsequent evolution of eukaryotes, including the rise of plants and animals, is emerging from the sequencing of the Cyanophora paradoxa genome, a function-rich species that retains much of the ancestral gene diversity shared by algae and plants.

For those unfamiliar with algae, they include the ubiquitious diatoms that are some of the most prodigious primary producers on our planet, accounting for up to 40% of the annual fixed carbon in the marine environment.

Bhattacharya leads the Rutgers Genome Cooperative that has spread the use of genome methods among university faculty. Using data generated by the Illumina Genome Analyzer IIx in his lab, Bhattacharya, his lab members Dana C. Price, Cheong Xin Chan, Jeferson Gross, Divino Rajah and collaborators from the U.S., Europe and Canada provided conclusive evidence that all plastids trace their origin to a single primary endosymbiosis.

Now that the blueprint of eukaryotic photosynthesis has come more clearly in sight, researchers will be able to figure out not only what unites all algae as plants but also what key features make them different from each other and the genes underlying these functions.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Rutgers University.

 

Journal Reference:

1. D. C. Price, C. X. Chan, H. S. Yoon, E. C. Yang, H. Qiu, A. P. M. Weber, R. Schwacke, J. Gross, N. A. Blouin, C. Lane, A. Reyes-Prieto, D. G. Durnford, J. A. D. Neilson, B. F. Lang, G. Burger, J. M. Steiner, W. Loffelhardt, J. E. Meuser, M. C. Posewitz, S. Ball, M. C. Arias, B. Henrissat, P. M. Coutinho, S. A. Rensing, A. Symeonidi, H. Doddapaneni, B. R. Green, V. D. Rajah, J. Boore, D. Bhattacharya. Cyanophora paradoxa Genome Elucidates Origin of Photosynthesis in Algae and Plants. Science, 2012; 335 (6070): 843 DOI: 10.1126/science.1213561

Rutgers University (2012, February 21). Origin of photosynthesis revealed: Genome analysis of ‘living fossil’ sheds light on the evolution of plants. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 29, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2012/02/120221125409.htm

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Evolution News & Views February 1, 2012 12:20 PM | Permalink

Darwin Day and Evolution Weekend overlap this year, providing an extra special opportunity to celebrate Charles Darwin’s 203rd birthday on February 12 and promote Darwinian theory in a variety of venues, including colleges and universities, churches and synagogues. We wanted to do something appropriate to add our own note to the hallelujah chorus. What do you give to an exhausted relic of antique 19th-century scientific materialism that has everything but genuine credibility?

How about a revised and updated list of pro-intelligent design peer-reviewed scientific papers, showing among other things that the 50th such paper was published in 2011? In a series of upcoming articles, we’ve asked Casey Luskin to note some highlights.

While intelligent design research is a new scientific field, recent years have been a period of encouraging growth, producing a strong record of peer-reviewed scientific publications. New publications continue to appear, now listed at our updated page.

The current boom goes back to 2004, when Discovery Institute senior fellow Stephen Meyer published a groundbreaking paper advocating ID in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. There are multiple hubs of ID-related research.

Biologic Institute, led by molecular biologists Doug Axe and Ann Gauger, is “developing and testing the scientific case for intelligent design in biology.” Biologic conducts laboratory and theoretical research on the origin and role of information in biology, the fine-tuning of the universe for life, and methods of detecting design in nature. That’s Dr. Gauger at the Biologic lab pictured above.

Another ID research group is the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, founded by senior Discovery Institute fellow William Dembski along with Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University. Their lab has attracted graduate-student researchers and published multiple peer-reviewed articles in technical science and engineering journals showing that computer programming “points to the need for an ultimate information source qua intelligent designer.”

Other pro-ID scientists around the world are publishing peer-reviewed pro-ID scientific papers. These include biologist Ralph Seelke at the University of Wisconsin Superior, Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig who recently retired from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Germany, and Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe.

Researchers have published their work in a variety of relevant technical venues, including peer-reviewed scientific journals, peer-reviewed scientific books from mainstream university presses, trade-press books, peer-edited scientific anthologies, peer-edited scientific conference proceedings and peer-reviewed philosophy of science journals and books.

These papers have appeared in scientific journals such as Protein Science, Journal of Molecular Biology, Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Quarterly Review of Biology, Cell Biology International, Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum, Physics of Life Reviews, Annual Review of Genetics, and many others. At the same time, pro-ID scientists have presented their research at conferences worldwide in fields such as genetics, biochemistry, engineering, and computer science.

This body of research is converging on a consensus: complex biological features cannot arise by unguided Darwinian mechanisms, but require an intelligent cause.

Despite ID’s publication record, we note parenthetically that recognition in peer-reviewed literature is not an absolute requirement to demonstrate an idea’s scientific merit. Darwin’s own theory of evolution was first published in a book for a general and scientific audience — his Origin of Species — not in a peer-reviewed paper. Nonetheless, ID’s peer-reviewed publication record shows that it deserves — and is receiving — serious consideration by the scientific community.

The purpose of ID’s research program is not to convince the unconvincible, critics and naysayers who repeat over and over in the media that there is no such thing as ID research, that ID has not produced a single peer-reviewed paper. (And they call us “science deniers”!) Rather, ID research seeks to engage open-minded scientists and thoughtful laypeople with credible, persuasive, peer-reviewed, empirical data supporting intelligent design.

And this is happening. ID has already gained the kind of scientific recognition you would expect from a young (and vastly underfunded) but promising scientific field. The scientific progress of ID has won the serious attention of skeptics in the scientific community, who engage in scientific debate with ID and attend private scientific conferences allowing off-the-record discussion with ID proponents.

As noted, the new revised and updated listing of pro-ID peer-reviewed papers can be viewed here. We provide an annotated bibliography of technical publications of various kinds that support, develop or apply the theory of intelligent design. The articles are grouped according to the type of publication.

Happy Darwin Day!

Biologists Replicate Key Evolutionary Step in Life on Earth

Follow how single-celled organisms began forming multi-cellular clusters

Green cells are undergoing cell death, a cellular division-of-labor–fostering new life.
Credit and Larger Version

January 16, 2012

More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth’s surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals.

Just how that happened is a question that has eluded evolutionary biologists.

Now scientists have replicated that key step in the laboratory using common Brewer’s yeast, a single-celled organism.

The yeast "evolved" into multi-cellular clusters that work together cooperatively, reproduce and adapt to their environment–in essence, they became precursors to life on Earth as it is today.

The results are published in this week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"The finding that the division-of-labor evolves so quickly and repeatedly in these ‘snowflake’ clusters is a big surprise," says George Gilchrist, acting deputy division director of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

"The first step toward multi-cellular complexity seems to be less of an evolutionary hurdle than theory would suggest," says Gilchrist. "This will stimulate a lot of important research questions."

It all started two years ago with a casual comment over coffee that bridging the famous multi-cellularity gap would be "just about the coolest thing we could do," recalled Will Ratcliff and Michael Travisano, scientists at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and authors of the PNAS paper.

Other authors of the paper are Ford Denison and Mark Borrello of UMN.

Then came the big surprise: it wasn’t that difficult.

Using yeast cells, culture media and a centrifuge, it only took the biologists one experiment conducted over about 60 days.

"I don’t think anyone had ever tried it before," says Ratcliff. "There aren’t many scientists doing experimental evolution, and they’re trying to answer questions about evolution, not recreate it."

The results have earned praise from evolutionary biologists around the world.

"To understand why the world is full of plants and animals, including humans, we need to know how one-celled organisms made the switch to living as a group, as multi-celled organisms," says Sam Scheiner, program director in NSF’s Division of Environmental Biology.

"This study is the first to experimentally observe that transition," says Scheiner, "providing a look at an event that took place hundreds of millions of years ago."

In essence, here’s how the experiments worked:

The scientists chose Brewer’s yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a species of yeast used since ancient times to make bread and beer because it is abundant in nature and grows easily.

They added it to nutrient-rich culture media and allowed the cells to grow for a day in test tubes.

Then they used a centrifuge to stratify the contents by weight.

As the mixture settled, cell clusters landed on the bottom of the tubes faster because they are heavier. The biologists removed the clusters, transferred them to fresh media, and agitated them again.

Sixty cycles later, the clusters–now hundreds of cells–looked like spherical snowflakes.

Analysis showed that the clusters were not just groups of random cells that adhered to each other, but related cells that remained attached following cell division.

That was significant because it meant that they were genetically similar, which promotes cooperation. When the clusters reached a critical size, some cells died off in a process known as apoptosis to allow offspring to separate.

The offspring reproduced only after they attained the size of their parents.

"A cluster alone isn’t multi-cellular," Ratcliff says. "But when cells in a cluster cooperate, make sacrifices for the common good, and adapt to change, that’s an evolutionary transition to multi-cellularity."

In order for multi-cellular organisms to form, most cells need to sacrifice their ability to reproduce, an altruistic action that favors the whole but not the individual, Ratcliff says.

For example, all cells in the human body are essentially a support system that allows sperm and eggs to pass DNA along to the next generation.

Thus multi-cellularity is by its nature very cooperative.

"Some of the best competitors in nature are those that engage in cooperation, and our experiment bears that out," says Travisano.

Evolutionary biologists have estimated that multi-cellularity evolved independently in about 25 groups.

Travisano and Ratcliff wonder why it didn’t evolve more often since it’s not that difficult to recreate in a lab.

Considering that trillions of one-celled organisms lived on Earth for millions of years, it seems like it should have, Ratcliff says.

That may be a question the biologists will answer in the future using the fossil record for thousands of generations of multi-cellular clusters, which are stored in a freezer in Travisano’s lab.

Since the frozen samples contain multiple cell lines that independently became multi-cellular, the researchers can compare them to learn whether similar or different mechanisms and genes were responsible in each case, Travisano says.

The next steps will be to look at the role of multi-cellularity in cancer, aging and other critical areas of biology.

"Multi-cellular yeast is a valuable resource for investigating a wide variety of medically and biologically important topics," Travisano says.

"Cancer was recently described as a fossil from the origin of multi-cellularity, which can be directly investigated with the yeast system.

"Similarly the origins of aging, development and the evolution of complex morphologies are open to direct experimental investigation that would otherwise be difficult or impossible."

-NSF-

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Multi-cellular ‘snowflake’ yeast images with a blue cell-wall stain and red dead-cell stain.
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First steps in the transition to multi-cellularity: ‘snowflake’ yeast with dead cells stained red.
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A multi-cellular yeast consisting of hundreds of cells.
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Multi-cellular yeast individuals containing central dead cells, which promote reproduction.
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Aberrant shapes of multi-cellular yeast’s dead cells: break points for reproduction.
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Last Updated: January 16, 2012

BBC News, January 11, 2012

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

The tiny frog sits easily on a US dime, whose diameter is 18mm

A frog species that appears to be the world’s smallest has been discovered in Papua New Guinea by a US-based team.

At 7mm (0.27 inches) long, Paedophryne amauensis may be the world’s smallest vertebrate – the group that includes mammals, fish, birds and amphibians.

The researchers also found a slightly larger relative, Paedophryne swiftorum.

Presenting the new species in PLoS One journal, they suggest the frogs’ tiny scale is linked to their habitat, in leaf litter on the forest floor.

Continue reading the main story

What are amphibians?

• First true amphibians evolved about 250 million years ago
• Three orders: frogs (inc. toads), salamanders (inc. newts) and the limbless caecilians
• Adapted to many aquatic and terrestrial habitats
• Present on every continent except Antarctica
• Many metamorphose from larvae to adults

• Amphibians videos, news and facts: BBC Nature

Finding the frogs was not an easy assignment.

They are well camouflaged among leaves on the forest floor, and have evolved calls resembling those of insects, making them hard to spot.

"The New Guinea forests are incredibly loud at night; and we were trying to record frog calls in the forest, and we were curious as to what these other sounds were," said research leader Chris Austin from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, US.

"So we triangulated to where these calls were coming from, and looked through the leaf litter.

"It was night, these things are incredibly small; so what we did after several frustrating attempts was to grab a whole handful of leaf litter and throw it inside a clear plastic bag.

"When we did so, we saw these incredibly tiny frogs hopping around," he told BBC News.

Littering the leaves

The Paedophryne genus was identified only recently, and consists of a number of tiny species found at various points in the eastern forests of Papua New Guinea.

The tiny limbs of amauensis (top) and swiftorum are rendered translucent

"They’re occupying the relatively thick leaf litter of tropical forest in low-lying parts of the island, eating incredibly small insects that typically are much smaller than insects that frogs eat," said Professor Austin.

"And they’re probably prey for a large number of relatively small invertebrates that don’t usually prey on frogs."

Predators may well include scorpions.

Intriguingly, other places in the world that also feature dense, moist leaf litter tend to possess such small frog species, indicating that amphibians are well placed to occupy this ecological niche.

Before the Paedophrynes were found, the title of "world’s smallest frog" was bestowed on the Brazilian gold frog (Brachycephalus didactylus) and its slightly larger Cuban relative, the Monte Iberia Eleuth (Eleutherodactylus iberia). They both measure less than 1cm long.

The smallest vertebrates have until now been fish.

Adult Paedocypris progenetica, which dwells in Indonesian swamps and streams, measure 7.9-10.3 mm long.

Male anglerfish of the species Photocorynus spiniceps are just over 6mm long. But they spend their lives fused to the much larger (50mm long) females, so whether they should count in this contest would be disputed.

Paedophryne amaunensis adults average 7.7mm, which is why its discoverers believe it how holds the crown.

The remote expanses of Papua New Guinea rank alongside those of Madagascar as places where hitherto undiscovered amphibian species are expected to turn up, as they are largely undeveloped and not well explored.

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Related Stories

• Asia’s smallest frog discovered 26 AUGUST 2010, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
• Japan’s giant salamanders 06 FEBRUARY 2010, SCI/TECH
• Smallest fish compete for honours 31 JANUARY 2006, SCI/TECH

Related Internet links

• PLoS One
• Louisiana State University

Around the BBC

• BBC Nature – Amphibians

How many planets in the Milky Way could support life? How about 10 billion.

Kate Allen

January 11, 2012

There are likely billions of habitable planets in the Milky Way, according to new research set to published in Nature magazine on Thursday.

“People have been speculating for hundreds of years — are planets like the Earth the rule, rather than the exception?” says Uffe Graae Jørgensen, a study author and an astrophysicist with the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

“Now, for the first time, we have a statistically robust number.”

On average, every sun in our galaxy hosts 1.6 planets in the region that corresponds to the distance between Venus and Saturn, according to the study.

One in ten stars has an Earthlike planet in the “habitable” orbit range, in which water could exist. Since there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, there are about 10 billion stars with planets that could — theoretically — support life.

“That’s surprisingly many,” says Jørgensen. The new data raises interesting questions outside of the scope of the Nature study, he added.

“If there are really 10 billion planets in the galaxy where the temperature is right so that life could exist, why have we not been visited by space aliens? The obvious explanation is there must be something more that is required for life to originate.”

The study crunched six years worth of data collected from telescopes around the world.

Researchers used a tricky technique called microlensing to observe the stars clustered in the centre of the Milky Way. Microlensing, unlike other planetary observation techniques, is uniquely capable of detecting planets orbiting in a range that, in our solar system, corresponds to the zone between Venus to Saturn.

The other planetary observation techniques, called the transit method and the radial velocity method, are much more sensitive to planets that orbit close to their host suns. In the transit method, planets are discovered when they pass in front of their sun, measurably dimming it. In the radial velocity method, planets are discovered when their gravitational field causes the host sun to wobble.

With microlensing, a planet is discovered under very specific, chance conditions. When one sun passes in front of another sun, the gravitational field of the foreground star will bend the light of the background star, acting like a magnifying lens. That brightening effect can be measured from Earth. If the foreground sun is orbited by a planet, it will result in a bump in the light-curve data.

Out of 500 million stars observed in the six-year study, 500 were observed during microlensing events. Ten of those had planets.

By crunching probability data, the researchers were able to extrapolate that 10 billion planets in the Milky Way could support life, and that stars orbited by planets are the rule, rather than the exception.

By WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS
January 9, 2012

Researchers have identified a gene that is required for proper development of the mouse inner ear.

Providing clues to deafness, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a gene that is required for proper development of the mouse inner ear.
In humans, this gene, known as FGF20, is located in a portion of the genome that has been associated with inherited deafness in otherwise healthy families.
“When we inactivated FGF20 in mice, we saw they were alive and healthy,” says senior author David M. Ornitz, MD, PhD, the Alumni Endowed Professor of Developmental Biology. “But then we figured out that they had absolutely no ability to hear.”
The results, published online Jan. 3 in PLoS Biology, show that disabling the gene causes a loss of outer hair cells, a special type of sensory cell in the inner ear responsible for amplifying sound. While about two-thirds of the outer hair cells were missing in mice without FGF20, the number of inner hair cells, the cells responsible for transmitting the amplified signals to the brain, appeared normal.

“This is the first evidence that inner and outer hair cells develop independently of one another,” says first author Sung-Ho Huh, PhD, postdoctoral research associate. “This is important because most age-related and noise-induced hearing loss is due to the loss of outer hair cells.”
As such, Ornitz and Huh speculate that FGF20 signaling will be a required step toward the goal of regenerating outer hair cells in mammals, the only vertebrates incapable of such feats of hearing restoration.
“Birds and, in fact, all vertebrates other than mammals have the ability to regenerate hair cells,” says co-author Mark E. Warchol, PhD, professor of otolaryngology. “Understanding how mammals differ from the rest is a topic of great interest.”
The FGF20 gene codes for one member of a family of proteins known as fibroblast growth factors. In general, members of this family are known to play important and broad roles in embryonic development, tissue maintenance and wound healing.
Beyond a simple on and off switch, Ornitz and his colleagues found that FGF20 signaling (or its chemical equivalent, FGF9) must occur on or before day 14 of the embryo’s development to produce a normal inner ear. Even if FGF20 or FGF9 signaling occurred on day 15 or later, the inner ear still did not develop properly.
“In mice, the precursor cells that can become outer hair cells must be exposed to the FGF20 protein at an early stage,” Ornitz says. “After embryonic day 14, it doesn’t matter if they see the protein. It’s too late for them to become outer hair cells.”
This critical time point does not exist in other vertebrates that retain the ability to form new hair cells throughout their lives. Whether FGF20 plays a role in this regeneration remains an open question.
“We’re literally doing those experiments right now,” Warchol says. “But FGF20 has been shown to be involved in other kinds of regeneration like the regrowth of zebrafish fins.”
Ornitz and his colleagues also see evidence that mutations in FGF20 may play a role in human deafness. A genetic region known as DFNB71 has been associated with congenital deafness in a few human families.
“And FGF20 is right smack in the center of that region,” Ornitz says. “Based on our work, we are predicting that these families will have some sort of mutation in the FGF20 gene. It hasn’t been found yet, but a group at the Baylor College of Medicine is sequencing this region of the genome to look for FGF20 gene mutations.”

This story is taken from Sacbee / PR Newswire

Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology to Convene Annual Meeting

Published Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011

CHARLESTON, S.C., Dec. 29, 2011 — Scientists will present research on marine biodiversity, climate change, animal behavior, and rapid evolutionary changes

CHARLESTON, S.C., Dec. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, one of the oldest and most prestigious interdisciplinary biological organizations, will hold its annual meeting at the Charleston Area Convention Center in Charleston, SC, from Jan. 3 to Jan. 7, 2012.  More than 1500 scientists will present the latest research on animal ecology, evolution, physiology, neurobiology, and biomechanics, offering journalists a rich assortment of news and feature possibilities.

Experts from a wide array of different disciplines will convene at the meeting to discuss topics relevant to marine biodiversity, climate change, animal behavior and neurobiology, and rapid evolutionary changes.  In addition to presentations of the latest research, the conference will include events with societal implications, such as a special lecture on evolution, education, and creationism over the past decades. 

This year, the SICB highlights three society-wide symposia:

• The Impacts of Developmental Plasticity on Evolutionary Innovation and Diversification
• Novel Methods for the Analysis of Animal Movement
• Dispersal of Marine Organisms

The Impacts of Developmental Plasticity on Evolutionary Innovation and DiversificationEcologists, evolutionary biologists, physiologists, and developmental geneticists discuss Developmental Plasticity—how animals grow differently, from zygote to adult, due to changes in their environment.  For example, young male dung beetles with access to plentiful food supplies grow large horns to fight other males, allowing for eased access to females.  Conversely, male beetles with limited food do not grow horns and instead develop alternative ways to access females.  Scientists think that such plasticity helps organisms to evolve rapidly and also promotes the formation of new species.  But no one fully understands what sorts of environmental changes promote plasticity, or what genetic and physiological changes actually cause animals to grow differently. 

Novel Methods for the Analysis of Animal Movement Scientists consider new ways to understand animal and cell movements, including cell movements in the earliest stages of embryo formation, insect flight, insect migration, and whales turning and diving.  Experts in genetics, biomechanics, and ecology will present computational approaches that rely on data from microscopy, high-speed video, and radar and satellite imaging. 

Dispersal of Marine OrganismsA diverse group of scientists talk on patterns of marine animal dispersal throughout the oceans. To explain the diversity and ecology of ocean species, these researchers will examine how tiny larval organisms can find suitable habitats in which to live. These methods of movement can include  swimming or crawling, drifting with ocean currents, or hitching a ride on larger animals on drifting seaweed, or on boats.  This symposium assembles an interdisciplinary group of outstanding young and established speakers to address dispersal in marine organisms in order to foster integration and cross-talk among different disciplines and to identify gaps in scientific knowledge and areas for future research.

SOURCE Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology

600-Million-Year-Old Microscopic Fossils Upend Evolution Theory

VOA News, December 23, 2011

Photo: AP

This composite of microscope images shows fossil animal embryos – discovered in China – that have opened a window on an early and poorly understood stage in the evolution of animals, February 1998 (file photo)

A remarkable new fossil discovery of amoeba-like micro-organisms that lived 570 million years ago could make scientists rethink some widely-accepted theories about how complex life on Earth first evolved from a single-celled universal common ancestor. 
An international team of researchers analyzed the rock-encased fossils in precise computer models created from high high-energy X-rays generated using a particle accelerator. 
The scientists say they were surprised when the results indicated the fossilized cell clusters were not animals or embryos. That is because it had long been thought that fossils showing this apparent pattern cell division represented the embryos of the earliest animals.

Instead, they say the finely detailed X-ray images exposed features pattern that led them to conclude the organisms were, “the reproductive spore bodies of single-celled ancestors of animals.”
Study co-author Phil Donoghue of Britain’s University of Bristol said the new results mean much of what has been written about the fossils for the last 10 years is “flat wrong.”
The new study is published in the journal, Science.
The microscopic fossils examined in the study were recovered from rocks collected in southern China. The scientists say the micro-organisms lived during the Ediacaran geologic period between 600 million and 543 million years ago when multi-celled life was just starting to evolve. 
Geologists say the Ediacaran period marks the end of the last ice age in a 250 million year-long series of glaciations that covered most of the planet and froze the oceans from pole to pole – a time commonly known as Snowball Earth. 
One theory proposed that climate shocks during the planet’s Snowball Earth phase initiated the evolution of complex, multicellular life that emerged in the Ediacaran period.

Find this article at:
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/600-Million-Year-Old-Microscopic-Fossils-Upend-Evolution-Theory-136172283.html

Anna Scrivenger | Thursday, October 20th, 2011 at 10:06 am

Missing link between birds and mammals: the platypus of eastern Australia

Arguably Australia’s weirdest animal, the platypus, is at the centre of a new theory about mammalian evolution.

The platypus is a strange, halfway house species, caught in time between the egg layers and the placental mammals. Bridging the gaps between bird, reptile and mammal it is warm-blooded and furry, but lays eggs rather than giving birth to live young. The echidna, also found in Australia, is the only other example.

This is a process that all mammals must have been through at some point in our evolutionary past, as life on Earth, for reasons best known to itself, moved from everyone laying eggs, towards certain species giving birth instead. Monotremes – mammals who still lay eggs – have therefore been very useful in understanding the origin of our sex chromosomes.

Professor Grutzner at the University of Adelaide says that the platypus gives key insight into how the mammalian genome has evolved over the past 200 million years. He has been working on an international project, led by the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, that uses new technology to highlight the active genes within different tissues and organs of different species, from mice to hens to humans.

The study has revealed that certain tissues, like the sexual organs, have evolved faster between different species than brain tissue has. In other words, the brains of different species are not as different as our other parts are.

The platypus was included in the study because of its ‘missing link’ status – representing our distant mammalian relative.

“We already know that our sex chromosomes emerged after the separation of monotremes from other mammals,” Professor Grutzner reports. “This allowed us to examine in this study how the activity of genes changes once they found themselves on a sex chromosome.”

The platypus brain was also found to be particularly active in explorative and navigational activity, something it has in common with fellow forager the mouse, but is less active in some other more domesticated beings.

The research will enable connections to be made between the physiology, anatomy, behaviour and underlying genes of different species, which can eventually help to map evolutionary history with animal characteristics and behaviour.

“It’s a very important starting point for further study,” Professor Grutzner said.

• More information: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news

Released: 7/6/2011 10:15 AM EDT
Source: Kansas State University

Research Team Finds Similarities In Genomes Across Multiple Species; Platypus Still Out Of Place

Newswise — MANHATTAN, Kan. — By mapping various genomes onto an X-Y axis, a team comprised mostly of Kansas State University researchers has found that Charles Darwin and a fruit fly — among other organisms — have a lot in common genetically.

Their discovery, "Chromosome Size in Diploid Eukaryotic Species Centers on the Average Length with a Conserved Boundary," was recently published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. It details a project that compared 886 chromosomes in 68 random species of eukaryotes — organisms whose cells contain a nucleus and are enclosed by cellular membranes. The researchers found that the chromosome sizes within each eukaryotic species are actually similar rather than drastically different as previously believed. They also found that the chromosomes of these different organisms share a similar distribution pattern.

Because chromosomes are the genetic building blocks for an organism and its traits, the information will be beneficial to understanding the core components of biological evolution — especially in genetics and genome evolution, said Jianming Yu, associate professor of agronomy at Kansas State University. With this data, scientists can now better predict the evolutionary adaptations of an organism.

"Basically what this all means is that if the chromosome number of a species can be given, the relative sizes of all the chromosomes can instantly be known," Yu said. "Also, if you tell me the genome size in the chromosome base pair, I can tell you the base pair length of each chromosome."

According to Yu, the most surprising finding is the extremely consistent distribution pattern of the chromosomes, a result from comparing the full sets of chromosomes — called genomes — of the 68 random eukaryotes. The team found that nearly every genome perfectly formed an S-curve of ascending chromosomal lengths when placed on a standardized X-Y axis. That meant the genome from a species of rice expressed the same pattern as the genome from a species of maize, sorghum, fruit fly, dog, chimpanzee, etc.

In order to reach these findings, though, the team started by comparing various genomes of species from multiple organisms, looking for similarities. The genomes selected were from eukaryotes; prokaryotes — organisms like bacteria that contain no cell nucleus; vertebrates — organisms with a spine; invertebrates — organisms without a spine, such as insects; vascular plants — plants that can transport food and material throughout their tissue; and unicellular organisms.

From there the team looked specifically at the chromosomes of 68 random eukaryote genomes. This amounted to observing 886 chromosomes, 22 of which were human autosomes — any chromosome other than a sex chromosome. The sex chromosomes of each species were omitted because of their vastly different evolutionary history from other chromosomes, Yu said.

The researchers placed each fully sequenced eukaryote genome onto an X-Y axis, hoping to find similarities between the various organisms. To help generalize the vast amount of information, the X-Y axis graph was standardized with each species.

"It eliminated a scale effect and made it possible to compare a species with several dozen chromosomes to a species with much fewer chromosomes," said Xianran Li, research associate in agronomy.

That’s when the team noticed the shockingly consistent distribution pattern.

"We could not believe this the first time the plot was generated," said Chengsong Zhu, research associate in agronomy.

The only genomes that deviated from forming an S-curve were that of the platypus — an organism that contains characteristics of birds, reptiles, mammals, amphibians and fish — and those of birds. Birds are unique because in addition to their usual chromosome sequences, they contain one additional set of minichromosome sequences, according to Zhongwei Lin, research associate in agronomy.

By finding normal distribution in nearly all of the genomes they used, geneticists can now say that if a species has a particular number of chromosomes, the chromosomes have to be distributed in this order because it’s dictated by the laws of mitosis, meiosis and cell division, according to Guihua Bai, adjunct professor of agronomy at Kansas State University and research geneticist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service.

"The integration of biology and statistics holds enormous promises to gain insights from genomic data and life processes," said Min Zhang, associate professor of statistics from Purdue University and a co-author of the paper.

"We’re in the genomic age, where sequencers and computers are constantly running and completing new genome sequences every day," Yu said. "We’re expecting this information can help when it comes to finding similarities in those genomes. This type of broad analysis across species, taxonomic and disciplinary boundaries is really exciting in terms of discovering fundamental principles out of teeming genomic data."

The project was supported with funding from Kansas State University’s Targeted Excellence Program, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Defense and a seed grant through Purdue University’s Discovery Park.

Other Kansas State University researchers include Yun Wu, research assistant in agronomy, and Weixing Song, assistant professor of statistics. Also collaborating on the study were four other biologists and statisticians from Purdue University, University of Minnesota and Cornell University.

The team’s study can be read at http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/6/1901.abstract.