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  1. Sep 2024
  2. Aug 2024
  3. Jul 2024
    1. Yet, some RNA strands can also fold to form ribozymes, 3D structures that could have guided life’s chemical processes the way proteins do now.

      Ribosomes are made up of rRNA and proteins. I was unaware of this until this reading

    2. Taken together, the interaction of triplet substrate pools with RNA templates promotes uncoupling of an RNA’s sequence (i.e. information content, and associated folding tendencies) from its replicability, thereby enhancing RNA’s capacity to serve as an informational polymer.

      i wonder what the effects of this would look like on a person compared to someone without triplet substrate pools

    3. For instance, when binding templates, triplets incur a lower entropic cost per position compared to canonical mononucleotides (thus aiding copying of sequences rich in weakly pairing A and U bases),

      Dose this imply that cellular functioning such as the repairing damaged skin could effectively be done quicker with triplet substrates?

    4. When RNA is copied, one strand acts as a template, and a replicase ribozyme would accurately guide which letters are added to the strand under construction.

      Similar to a chef making a recipe and someone at home following that recipe

    5. iterative RNA-templated oligonucleotide ligation

      I was a bit confused by this term and found that it means synthesis of longer RNA sequences from shorter oligonucleotides which is guided by an RNA templet.

    6. reciprocally synthesizing their own ‘+’ and ‘–’ strands

      From Biology LibreText: Positive-sense viral RNA is similar to mRNA and thus can be immediately translated by the host cell. Negative-sense viral RNA is complementary to mRNA and thus must be converted to positive-sense RNA by an RNA polymerase before translation.

      For some context about the information.

    7. molecule must have had the ability to make copies of itself.

      RNA folding is a common process when RNA is synthesized. After researching the process is called cotranscriptional folding and is thought to impact gene expression and RNA function.

    1. How can sex comb melanization affect sex comb function? In insects, melanization impacts not only the color of the adult cuticle but also its mechanical stiffness

      Key point of why only 3% of y1 male fruit flies are able to mate.

    2. yellow on male

      Just wanted to throw out that it may be important to study males due to the yellow gene being a sex-linked trait. Males will have a greater chance of inheriting the phenotype as they only require one X chromosome to display it.

    3. The interaction between Yellow and dopamine might explain the protein’s effects on male mating success because dopamine acts as a modulator of male courtship drive in D. melanogaster (Zhang et al., 2016).

      Dose this mean a fly in a lab setting could mate less than a true wild fruit fly? (assuming lab flies produce less dopamine compared to their wild counterpart)

    4. which was perceived as a behavioral defect for decades, is caused by changes in the morphology of the structures used during mating. Other recent studies have also shown the importance of morphological structures for stickleback schooling (Greenwood et al., 2015), water strider walking (Santos et al., 2017), and cricket singing (Pascoal et al., 2014) behaviors.

      Using this knowledge, I wonder if eye color could also effect the chances of mating in these fruit flies.

    5. Video recordings of male flies with reduced yellow expression in dsx-expressing cells showed the same mating defect observed in y1 mutants: males seem to perform all courtship actions normally, but repeatedly failed to copulate (Video 5).

      This leads me to question if females mate more to visual cues rather than chemical cues.

  4. Jun 2024
    1. For example, D. pachea is endemic to the Sonoran Desert of North America, where it depends on the sterols in the cactus Lophocereus schottii, which has alkaloids that other Drosophila species cannot tolerate. Because of its obligate association with its cactus host, it is exposed to temperatures that often approach 50°C. Such species provide unprecedented opportunities to understand the genetic bases of adaptations to extreme situations (see Box 1) and to recruit these species to address problems of species loss in the face of global warming and other anthropogenic changes.

      Interesting, kind of similar to how different species of mammals adapt to different environments and even take on adaptations necessary to survive in that environment. I think that studying evolutionary adaptations of these drosophila could help to combat species loss as it would give us insight towards generational survival.

    2. D. melanogaster, described by Meigen in 1830, appears to have originated in sub-Saharan Africa (Lachaise et al., 1988). The first out-of-Africa habitat expansion of D. melanogaster is thought to have occurred between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, when it moved to Europe and Asia

      Throughout my undergrad research, I have found that most species whos evolutionary history or point of origin is tracked usually comes out of africa and then moves into europe or north america. This the same for humans, and felids to my knowledge. However, Canids seem to have originated in Northeast Asia.

    3. The genetic bases of these specializations, as they relate to phenomena such as the evolution of pesticide resistance (

      Does this mean pesticides are a human made product that impact insects in the same capacity as allelochmeicals and secondary metabolites?

    4. human disease

      I didn't see any evidence pointing to the commonalities between human genes and fruit fly gene sequence, is this part of the reasoning why the species can be used for this purpose?

    5. ales appear to sort themselves out by size at the mating site, with smaller males often being found in parts of the fruit where there are fewer females and thus fewer matings

      This is extremely interesting. I wonder what this means for the future of the species as it seems a greater concentration of larger males are mating with females. Are the mother's genetics what keep a variety of sizes present within a population?

    6. Another product of anthropogenic change is the evolution of pesticide resistance in a wide range of insects of economic and medical importance.

      can this be used to reflect people's natural resistance to certain diseases?

    7. What role can natural history play in our ability to understand these interactions with a view towards disease mitigation and treatment? In the past few decades, the importance of the gut microbiome for models of human health has grown.

      kinda surprising that they could use something as small as these flies to study gut microbes, I wonder what type of tools they use to study this.

    8. It is not clear why or how he came to breed them, but their short generation time and ease of rearing were probably very appealing attributes.

      When it comes to model organisms, a short generation time is essential that way we can quickly see the results of potential crosses, another model organism that has a short generation time is the zebrafish

    1. ematostella vectensis suggests that venom is already expressed in eggs and larvae of this species.

      an example that this venom was not originally in the animal but was developed over a long period of time

    2. by ectodermal gland cells

      This relates to gbonet's comment on spiders and the Cnidaria's evolutionary similarities. In an article I read, it pointed out that the epithelia of three major salivary glands may be of ectodermal origin, and spiders deliver venom from modified salivary glands.

    3. A planula larva emerges from the egg package 48–72 hpf and starts swimming in the water

      I am a bit excited that I predicted this information after researching a bit of the first few sentences!

    4. They then become swimming larvae, barely visible to the naked eye, that do not feed

      This interested me and I was wondering if these would be considered planula larvae? If so it is extremely interesting and I wonder when their mouth and digestive tract develop. I also learned a new term-- lecithotrophy. Which means that they feed on egg yolk and materials put in the egg by the mother (I would assume the ladder is not applicable since the sea anemones shoot out their sperm and eggs to reproduce there is not time for preparation of greater material).

    5. The oldest extant group of venomous animals is the marine phylum Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones, corals, jellyfish and hydroids.

      I wonder when comparing the evolutionary tree of a Cnidaria species to the evolutionary tree of a snake, or spider, how similar would they be?

    6. The starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis, is becoming a leading cnidarian lab model as unlike many other cnidarian species it can be grown in the lab throughout its life cycle. This makes Nematostella a unique system to study the venom of an animal with a complex life cycle. Another advantage is that the high genetic homogeneity of the common Nematostella lab strain minimizes individual genetic variation, which is far from trivial in most other venomous animals collected from the wild in limited numbers.

      These are all valid reasons that support the claim that the Starlet Sea Anemone is a prime model organism for studying the venom of an animal with a complex life cycle.

  5. May 2024