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Journal Articles
TABT Article of Week Archive

The Evolution of Multicellualarity - Niklas, Karl J. - American Journal of Botany 101(1): 6–25. 2014
It boggles the mind just to think of a single cell, but how did cells get together to become multicellular organisms? This article lays out the evidence based on phylogeny in a way that – if not easy to understand – is the best we can do so far.

Genome-wide Mapping of DNA Methylation in the Human Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2013.11.007  - posted 12/31/2013
Malaria kills thousands of people every year. Efforts to reduce those numbers has been slower than expected, but this article provides hint for an new avenue to achieve success.

Breeding strategy of Flightless Cormorants Tindle et al.: Marine Ornithology 41: 121 –133 (2013)
I have a heightened interest in the flightless cormorants of the Galapagos Islands. Having visited the Galapagos on seven occasions beginning in the summer of 1978, it was only on a recent TABT-sponsored trip that I got to see these interesting birds. This article gives an update on the breeding strategy of the flightless cormorants and provides some interesting insights of which I was unaware (such as a very low fidelity from year to year by adult breeding pairs). - posted 12/03/2013

Reeves MK, Medley KA, Pinkney AE, Holyoak M, Johnson PTJ, et al. (2013) Localized Hotspots Drive Continental Geography of Abnormal Amphibians on U.S. Wildlife Refuges. PLoS ONE 8(11): e77467. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0077467 - posted 11/27/2013
You know the news reports – frogs with five legs, frogs with only three legs, etc. Well, what’s been happening with the frogs? Are amphibians still having all those problems? Are things any better? Should students be out doing studies? Here’s a recent article that provides a few answers.

Mutational landscape and significance across 12major cancer types doi:10.1038/nature12634  posted 10/17/2013
The following article was published October 17, 2013 in the journal Nature as an open access piece. I thought you might be interested since all of us knows someone affected by cancer. In addition it has examples for the classroom of point mutations, insertions and deletions, mutations discussed in all good biology classes.

Creating Larger and Better Connected Protected Areas Enhances the Persistence
of Big Game Species in the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany Biodiversity Hotspot.
Di Minin E, et al. (2013) PLoS ONE 8(8): e71788. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071788  posted 10/05/2013
Conservation of biodiversity is especially important in hotspots where more niche connections are found. But how do we decide where to spend our conservation dollars for the greatest return on investment. There is at present no way to know with high certainty, but it should be a “no brainer” that islands of biodiversity should be linked whenever possible.

Abundance and Survival of Pacific Humpback Whales in a Proposed Critical Habitat Area - PLoS ONE 8(9): e75228. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0075228 posted 9/17/2013
Are the humpback whales – once nearly extirpated – really coming back? With little funding, but a great deal of community support, these authors set out to find out. After eight years they provide some interesting data that indicate that the whales are recovering. But more importantly, how can the research continue? This article provides some suggestions for how to do just that.

Diversity is Maintained by Seasonal Variation in Species Abundance - BMC Biology 2013, 11:98 doi:10.1186/1741-7007-11-98
How can so many different species exist in an ecosystem? I’d never thought about it, but it seems intuitive that the seasons help to maintain diversity. Temporal separation allows more niches, thereby allowing more species. I thought this was a good article, especially for teaching A. P. Biology students.

Brazilian Savanna Fruits Contain Higher Bioactive Compounds Content and Higher Antioxidant Activity Relative to the Conventional Red Delicious Apple - PLOS Biology One August 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 8 | e72826 - posted 8/29/2013
Everyone knows that we need to eat foods containing antioxidants. For some people, the red delicious apple fills the bill. Apples and similar fruits require fertile soil with a significant amount of moisture. I was surprised to read that in general, bioactive compound content such as flavanols, anthocyanins, vitamin C and antioxidants may be much higher in other fruits that we don’t usually see at the grocery store. These fruits grow in poor soils with little water in Brazil. I wonder why we’re not embarking on lots of research to gear up their production since climate change will apparently cause more desertification, especially in the United States.

Independent Evolution of Transcriptional Inactivation on Sex Chromosomes in Birds and Mammals- PLOS Genetics - posted 7/23/2013
X chromosome inactivation in mammals is tightly controlled, as expected from a mechanism that compensates for the different dosage of X-borne genes in XX females and XY males. However, many X genes escape inactivation in humans, inactivation of the X in marsupials is partial, and the unrelated sex chromosomes of monotremes have incomplete and gene-specific inactivation of X-linked genes. So, how does all of this work in mammals and birds. This article elucidates some of the problems.

Food for the Future  Nature July 2013 - posted 7/11/2013
There are about 300,000 species of flowering plants. Although we sometimes think of ourselves as generalist omnivores, we depend on fewer than a dozen of those species for more than 80% of our food. That could be a dicey prospect if some catastrophe (Think potato blight.) befell even one of them. So, what’s the future? Perhaps we should heed the recommendations in this opinion piece to determine our future.

Mate Choice and the Origin of Menopause PLOS Biology - posted 6/18/2013


How Non-Coding RNA Can Matter Without Meaning - posted 6/12/2013
You’ve heard about “junk DNA” – the apparently long non-coding strands of DNA throughout the genome. Well, it seems that long strands of RNA don’t code for proteins. What good could this be? Read the attached article to find out.

Q&A: Antibiotic resistance: what more do weknow and what more can we do? - BMC Biology 2013, 11:51 Wright, Gerard D. posted June 4, 2013
If bacteria continue to develop resistance to antibiotics, why aren’t new antibiotics produced to keep ahead? The answer to this and other questions are found in this article.

Novel Symbiosis - Pitcher Plant and Ants - PLOS One Article - posted June 1, 2013
Everybody who knows me realizes that I like a good symbiosis story. Here is a newly reported mutual symbiosis between an ant and a pitcher plant. You might wonder what the plant is getting from the ants that live on and in them, and all you have to do to find out is to read this interesting article.

Metamorphosis Revealed  (posted 5/23/2013)
Have you wondered about the mystery of insect metamorphosis? I always pondered how cells moved and changed inside what appeared to be a dry piece of tissue from the outside. Did you ever want to see exactly what was happening inside the chrysalis? Well, wonder no more. This excellent piece has time lapse imaging of just how the show progresses.

Integrated genomic characterization of endometrial carcinoma Nature doi:10.1038/nature12113 (posted 5/15/2013)
Cancer – the “Big C” – strikes fear in us all. The form that causes one-fourth of the malignancies in females is endometrial cancer, which arises in the lining of the uterus. This article published in Nature a couple of weeks ago characterizes the endometrial cancer genome and provides some hope of methodology to attack this form of cancer.

Petal Growth and Shape PLOS Biology (posted 5/7/2013)
It’s spring and there are a myriad of species in bloom. Some have short rounded petals, and others have long and pointed petals. How do plants achieve such diversity in petal growth and shape? Well, look no further for the answer. It is attached.

Reflections on plant development and genetics  BMC Biology 2013, 11:25 (posted 4/17/2013)
Many plants have adult cells that can de-differentiate and then grow into a completely new plant. That feat isn’t nearly so straightforward in adult animal cells. This short article deals with that question as well as some of the other contributions plant genetics may make.

Genomes of Tapeworms  (posted 4/10/2013)
Some people think its creepy to contemplate the organisms that live inside us, making our organs their home and absorbing all the nourishment they need from our body fluids. But ponder what adaptations a species must evolve to be successful in their environment. This article compares the genomes of four human parasites to determine how they survive and how they may be attacked by us.

New World Cattle Show Ancestry From Multiple Independent Domestication Events - PNAS  (posted 4/03/2013)

Patterns of Population Epigenomic Diversity

Effects of Insufficient Sleep
PNAS

Epigenetics and the role of heterochromatin in development  
S. Gasser BMC Biology 2013, 11:21
Fifty years ago we thought we’d found the keys to understanding genetics. Then we found out that we didn’t have 100,000 genes, but only 20-35 thousand. Epigenetics and heterochromatin are two terms that never entered the lexicon until long after I’d completed formal training in biology. We’re still in the learning phase of both epigenetics and heterochromatin and a lot of research is being conducted in both areas. How exciting to learn about the queen of sciences!

Global Estimates of Syphilis and Infant Mortality  
This article presents some astonishing findings. Syphilis, an STD infection caused by Treponema pallidum, can pass from an infected mother to her unborn child. Screening pregnant women for syphilis during routine care  and then treating any detected infections with penicillin injections has been feasible for many years. However, because coverage of testing and treatment of syphilis remains low in many countries, mother-to-child transmission of syphilis (i.e. “congenital syphilis”) is still a global public health problem. The World Health Organization estimated that there were 2 million syphilis infections among pregnant women annually, 65% of which resulted in adverse pregnancy outcomes including the baby’s death during early or late pregnancy, soon after birth or the birth of an infected baby. Babies born with syphilis often have a low birth weight and develop problems such as blindness, deafness, and seizures if not treated. This should be an eye-opening article for students, teachers and the public at large.

Chomosome Condensation 
So, why do chromosomes look the way they do? As it turns out, we don’t yet have all the answers. This article tells what we do know and what we still need to know.

Mecoptera - ZooKeys 269: 51–65 (2013) 
This article is intriguing because its authors suggest that the order Mecoptera originated before the breakup of Pangea 225 million years ago. Apparently the breakup was responsible for the two branches extant today. “New continental record and new species of Austromerope (Mecoptera, Meropeidae) from Brazil” by Renato Jose Pires Machado, et al. in ZooKeys last week provides professional entomologists with information about this new species of earwigfly. Just as importantly for biology students, it is an excellent example of where the bar is set for scientists in describing and naming new species. This work, like some other areas of biology, needs additional workers for it is estimated that there may be between 1 and 15 million new species that await identification. (posted 2/23/13)

Shift Happens - What evidence do we have that at least some organisms will adapt to global warming? The authors of this article document the geographic shift of a species of brown algae that is highly correlated with increased water temperature. (posted 2/14/13)

Barcoding Life's Matrix 
-  PLOS One (posted 2/05/13)
Everybody knows that teaching is a difficult job, but few realize how difficult it is for science teachers – especially us biology teachers – to translate complexity into something understandable for students. But it may now get just a little easier to make biodiversity and genomics comprehendible. Barcoding Life’s Matrix: Translating Biodiversity Genomics into High School Settings to Enhance Life Science Education takes a shot at helping those in the trenches.

Why Most Published Research is False.  (posted 1/29/13)


Neural Activity - PLOS One (posted 1/22/13)
Everybody knows children like to watch Sesame Street. As it turns out, the degree to which children show adult-like brain responses while watching Sesame Street predicts their performance on math and verbal IQ tests. The findings from this study indicate that neural responses to real-world stimuli are better predictors of math development than neural responses to simpler stimuli used in traditional experiments. The results also suggest that the new method of measure may be more effective than the traditional approach at linking patterns of brain development to children’s experiences and performance in the classroom.

Adding Perches for Cross Pollination in Orchids - PLOS One (posted 1/15/13)

Different Noses for Different Mice and Men - Journal Article (posted 1/08/13)

What is regeneration and why look to plannarians? - Journal Article (posted 12/15/12)

What is a pathogen? - Journal Article (posted 12/15/12)

What is the Golgi Apparatus, and why are we asking? posted 10/16/2011

"25 School Mistakes I Have Made" by Alton Biggs posted 10-06-2011

25 Ideas for Engaging Science Projects - Alton Biggs posted 9-20-2011

Evolution Gems - Nature   posted 11-30-09

Food Use in the Science Laboratory 



The Nucleus Discontinued  (12/12/08)

TABT Board Votes at CAST

The TABT Board of Directors voted at CAST to discontinue our quarterly newsletter, The Nucleus. Past issues can be viewed and downloaded from our Web site (http://www.tabt.us). Joe Stanaland had earlier resigned his duties as editor with the Fall 2008 edition. After a call for volunteers, none were forthcoming by the time TABT met in Fort Worth in November. The Board did decide to publish articles of interest via email and posting on our Web site as they are sent in and reviewed. It was made clear from the Board discussion that it believes that each member of TABT has some idea of value to submit. We welcome and encourage your submissions. Please make submissions to Alton Biggs (altonb@ix.netcom.com) who will send them out for review and posting.



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