厚壁菌门细菌及其祖先蛋白的氨基酸偏好性研究

从KEGG数据库中获得厚壁菌门下的18种细菌的蛋白质和氨基酸序列,运用生物信息学方法重建了这18个物种的发育树以及祖先的氨基酸序列,得到了18个现存物种及其祖先物种的氨基酸组成偏好情况。结果表明,现存物种的蛋白质的氨基酸组成有偏好,而在祖先蛋白质中也存在着氨基酸偏好的现象。对于每一种氨基酸,各物种的使用偏好不完全相同。研究结果为今后透彻地研究厚壁菌门细菌打下了基础。     

Enhancement of symbioses between butterfly caterpillars and ants by vibrational communication

Butterfly caterpillars produce calls that appear to play a role in maintaining symbiotic associations with ants. A survey of butterfly species from South and Central America, North America, Europe, Thailand, and Australia suggests that the ability for caterpillars to call has evolved independently at least three times, and that calling may be ubiquitous among ant-associated species. Because ants use substrate-borne sound in their communication systems, this study points to the possibility that the calls of one insect species have evolved to attract other, unrelated species.     

Bat predation and the evolution of frog vocalizations in the neotropics

Bat predation has probably had an important influence on the evolution of frog vocalizations in the Neotropics. The rate at which fringe-lipped bats capture frogs is significantly higher when the frogs are calling. These bats respond to a wide variety of calls from edible frogs, and, when simultaneously presented with a choice, choose the recorded call of a palatable species over that of a poisonous species and the call of a small species over that of one too large to capture. Thus the selective advantages of loud, rapid mating calls in anurans are balanced by an increased risk of predation.     

Genetic control of song specificity in crickets

The calling song of male field crickets is composed of stereotyped rhythmic pulse intervals, which are predictable expressions of genotype. Females identify conspecific males by their song. Two species of crickets were found to exhibit species-specific song preference, and hybrids between them preferred hybrid calls over either parental call. These results imply genetic control of song reception as well as transmission.     

Superfast muscles set maximum call rate in echolocating bats

As an echolocating bat closes in on a flying insect, it increases call emission to rates beyond 160 calls per second. This high call rate phase, dubbed the terminal buzz, has proven enigmatic because it is unknown how bats are able to produce calls so quickly. We found that previously unknown and highly specialized superfast muscles power rapid call rates in the terminal buzz. Additionally, we show that laryngeal motor performance, not overlap between call production and the arrival of echoes at the bat's ears, limits maximum call rate. Superfast muscles are rare in vertebrates and always associated with extraordinary motor demands on acoustic communication. We propose that the advantages of rapid auditory updates on prey movement selected for superfast laryngeal muscle in echolocating bats.     

丹顶鹤与白枕鹤语图结构分析及比较

采用Avisoft SAS-Lab软件对采自哈尔滨北方森林动物园和扎龙自然保护区的笼养丹顶鹤(Grusjaponensis)和白枕鹤(Grus vipio)的鸣声,即繁殖期对鸣、日常短鸣及幼鸟鸣声进行了语图结构分析,对丹顶鹤和白枕鹤的同源声音进行比较发现,它们的对鸣、日常短鸣及幼鸟的鸣声都具有显著的差异:白枕鹤对鸣的单音节持续时间较丹顶鹤短;丹顶鹤日常短鸣的持续时间较长,频率较高。对于幼鸟鸣声,则是白枕鹤幼鸟鸣声持续的时间更长,频率更高。     

Vocal imitation and individual recognition of finch calls

American goldfinch females recognize individual males by their individually distinctive flight calls. Goldfinches and other cardueline finch species are also capable of learning new flight calls by imitation during pair and flock formation. Vocal imitation can occur between members of different species as well as between members of the same species. Learning of new flight calls differs in several respects from typical passerine song learning.     

Signal perception in frogs and bats and the evolution of mating signals

Psychophysics measures the relationship between a stimulus's physical magnitude and its perceived magnitude. Because decisions are based on perception of stimuli, this relationship is critical to understanding decision-making. We tested whether psychophysical laws explain how female túngara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus) and frog-eating bats (Trachops cirrhosus) compare male frog calls, and how this imposes selection on call evolution. Although both frogs and bats prefer more elaborate calls, they are less selective as call elaboration increases, because preference is based on stimulus ratios. Thus, as call elaboration increases, both relative attractiveness and relative predation risk decrease because of how receivers perceive and compare stimuli. Our data show that female cognition can limit the evolution of sexual signal elaboration.     

一种无线移动网络接入控制新算法

提出了一种基于实测的呼叫接入控制算法．该算法在为每个会话提供合适的服务质量等级的同时,确保切换呼叫的掉线率低于预定义的目标值,同时提高系统统计复用增益(系统允许接入呼叫连接数)．该算法根据切换呼叫掉线数目和掉线概率来预测下一时刻可能的切换掉线数,据此动态调整预留门限值．同时采用Hopfield神经网络在所有已接入连接和允许接入的新呼叫间自适应和公平地分配带宽资源．仿真结果表明,该算法可保证掉线概率在目标值范围内,同时可降低新呼叫阻塞率,从而提高了系统的统计复用增益．     

Sponge paleogenomics reveals an ancient role for carbonic anhydrase in skeletogenesis

Sponges (phylum Porifera) were prolific reef-building organisms during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic approximately 542 to 65 million years ago. These ancient animals inherited components of the first multicellular skeletogenic toolkit from the last common ancestor of the Metazoa. Using a paleogenomics approach, including gene- and protein-expression techniques and phylogenetic reconstruction, we show that a molecular component of this toolkit was the precursor to the alpha-carbonic anhydrases (alpha-CAs), a gene family used by extant animals in a variety of fundamental physiological processes. We used the coralline demosponge Astrosclera willeyana, a "living fossil" that has survived from the Mesozoic, to provide insight into the evolution of the ability to biocalcify, and show that the alpha-CA family expanded from a single ancestral gene through several independent gene-duplication events in sponges and eumetazoans.     

Molecular and genomic data identify the closest living relative of primates

A full understanding of primate morphological and genomic evolution requires the identification of their closest living relative. In order to resolve the ancestral relationships among primates and their closest relatives, we searched multispecies genome alignments for phylogenetically informative rare genomic changes within the superordinal group Euarchonta, which includes the orders Primates, Dermoptera (colugos), and Scandentia (treeshrews). We also constructed phylogenetic trees from 14 kilobases of nuclear genes for representatives from most major primate lineages, both extant colugos, and multiple treeshrews, including the pentail treeshrew, Ptilocercus lowii, the only living member of the family Ptilocercidae. A relaxed molecular clock analysis including Ptilocercus suggests that treeshrews arose approximately 63 million years ago. Our data show that colugos are the closest living relatives of primates and indicate that their divergence occurred in the Cretaceous.     

Beyond electronic feeding: The implementation of call feeding for pregnant sows

Call feeding for pregnant sows is a novel modular extension of a conventional electronic feeder (PigTek INTEC MAC) communicating via ISOagriNET. The call feeding module (CFM) assigns individual calls to each animal of a group supplied by one feeder and trains them to associate that call with feed access. Afterwards it actively calls sows to the feeder in a variable sequence in order to minimize queuing and thereby reducing aggression, stress and injuries associated with feeding. In this paper, we describe the automatic training procedures, the principal technical design and implementation details that make call feeding applicable in practice. The automatic training consists of an initial Pavlovian conditioning during standard electronic feeding and a subsequent operant conditioning. During Pavlovian conditioning the sows may enter the feeder whenever they have remaining feed allowance. An individual acoustic signal is then played immediately before the feed is dispensed. In the operant training the sow learns by experience that she can enter the feeder only after the individual acoustic signal has been presented. The training modes and their durations are individual to each sow’s learning success. Undersupply with feed due to incomplete learning is prevented by the training routines without manual intervention by controlling automatically the proportion of operant and Pavlovian conditioning. Thus, introducing call feeding in an existing herd is possible. The implementation is further able to estimate roughly the social hierarchy and incorporates this in the calculation of the call sequence in order to attenuate feeding associated aggressions. It helps to provide the animals with a positive anticipation of safe feeding and thereby offers a suitable way to improve welfare and health of pregnant sows. Being automatically controlled, it is easy to apply and has the potential to become a promising future element of precision livestock farming.     

Protein sequences from mastodon and Tyrannosaurus rex revealed by mass spectrometry

Fossilized bones from extinct taxa harbor the potential for obtaining protein or DNA sequences that could reveal evolutionary links to extant species. We used mass spectrometry to obtain protein sequences from bones of a 160,000- to 600,000-year-old extinct mastodon (Mammut americanum) and a 68-million-year-old dinosaur (Tyrannosaurus rex). The presence of T. rex sequences indicates that their peptide bonds were remarkably stable. Mass spectrometry can thus be used to determine unique sequences from ancient organisms from peptide fragmentation patterns, a valuable tool to study the evolution and adaptation of ancient taxa from which genomic sequences are unlikely to be obtained.     

Whistle matching in wild bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)

Dolphin communication is suspected to be complex, on the basis of their call repertoires, cognitive abilities, and ability to modify signals through vocal learning. Because of the difficulties involved in observing and recording individual cetaceans, very little is known about how they use their calls. This report shows that wild, unrestrained bottlenose dolphins use their learned whistles in matching interactions, in which an individual responds to a whistle of a conspecific by emitting the same whistle type. Vocal matching occurred over distances of up to 580 meters and is indicative of animals addressing each other individually.     

Timing the radiations of leaf beetles: hispines on gingers from latest cretaceous to recent

Stereotyped feeding damage attributable solely to rolled-leaf hispine beetles is documented on latest Cretaceous and early Eocene ginger leaves from North Dakota and Wyoming. Hispine beetles (6000 extant species) therefore evolved at least 20 million years earlier than suggested by insect body fossils, and their specialized associations with gingers and ginger relatives are ancient and phylogenetically conservative. The latest Cretaceous presence of these relatively derived members of the hyperdiverse leaf-beetle clade (Chrysomelidae, more than 38,000 species) implies that many of the adaptive radiations that account for the present diversity of leaf beetles occurred during the Late Cretaceous, contemporaneously with the ongoing rapid evolution of their angiosperm hosts.     

Structural evidence for evolution of the beta/alpha barrel scaffold by gene duplication and fusion

The atomic structures of two proteins in the histidine biosynthesis pathway consist of beta/alpha barrels with a twofold repeat pattern. It is likely that these proteins evolved by twofold gene duplication and gene fusion from a common half-barrel ancestor. These ancestral domains are not visible as independent domains in the extant proteins but can be inferred from a combination of sequence and structural analysis. The detection of subdomain structures may be useful in efforts to search genome sequences for functionally and structurally related proteins.     

Cytogenetics and germplasm enrichment in Brassica allopolyploids in China

This paper reviews research advances in cytogenetics and germplasm innovation in Brassica allopolyploids, particularly oilseed rape(Brassica napus), in China. Three naturally evolved Brassica allotetraploid species are cytologically stable but tend to preferentially lose several chromosomes from one subgenome when induced by alien chromosome elimination. A-subgenome is extracted from B. napus, and the ancestral Brassica rapa was restituted after the total loss of C-subgenome chromosomes. Genome-wide genetic and epigenetic alterations were observed in both natural and synthetic Brassica allotetraploids. B. napus was subjected to extensive interspecific hybridization with landraces of B. rapa and Brassica juncea, which exhibit abundant phenotype variations, to widen the genetic diversity in breeding and select numerous elite germplasm resources and cultivars; these cultivars include the representative Zhongyou 821, which also parented numerous other varieties. Novel B. napus genotypes were obtained using Brassica trigenomic hybrids and allohexaploids(2 n=54, AABBCC) by combining subgenomes from extant allotetraploids and diploids as bridge. Alien additions, substitutions, and translocations of the B. napus genome were developed by intergeneric/intertribal sexual and somatic hybridizations with several crucifers. Furthermore, mitochondrial DNA recombination promoted the production of novel cytoplasmic male sterile lines.     

Mating preference and the direction of evolution in Drosophila

Differences in the degree of successful matings between pairs of reciprocal hybrid matings indicate the direction of evolution among related species of Drosophila. Females of a derived species do not mate with males of the ancestral species, whereas females of the ancestral species readily mate with males of the derived species.     

The effect of trematode infection on amphibian limb development and survivorship

The causes of amphibian deformities and their role in widespread amphibian declines remain conjectural. Severe limb abnormalities were induced at high frequencies in Pacific treefrogs (Hyla regilla) exposed to cercariae of a trematode parasite (Ribeiroia sp.). The abnormalities closely matched those observed at field sites, and an increase in parasite density caused an increase in abnormality frequency and a decline in tadpole survivorship. These findings call for further investigation of parasite infection as a cause of amphibian deformities in other sites and species.