We find their diversity loss was not just a consequence of “”gamblers ruin”" but resulted from the evolutionary loss to the Red Queen, a failure to keep pace with a deteriorating environment. Diversity loss is driven equally by both depressed origination rates and elevated extinction rates. Although we find diversity-dependent origination and extinction rates, the diversity of each clade only transiently equaled the implied equilibrium diversity. Thus, the processes that drove diversity loss in terrestrial mammal clades were fundamentally nonequilibrial and overwhelmed diversity-dependent processes.”
“G.
G. Simpson, one of the chief architects of evolutionary biology’s modern synthesis, proposed that diversification occurs on a macroevolutionary adaptive landscape, but landscape models are seldom used to study adaptive divergence in large radiations. We show that for Caribbean Anolis lizards,
GSK461364 molecular weight diversification on similar Simpsonian landscapes leads to striking convergence of entire faunas on four islands. Parallel radiations unfolding at large temporal scales shed light on the process of adaptive diversification, indicating that the adaptive landscape may give rise to predictable evolutionary patterns in nature, Blebbistatin price that adaptive peaks may be stable over macroevolutionary time, and that available geographic area influences the ability of lineages to discover new adaptive peaks.”
“Despite numerous examples of the effects of the human gastrointestinal microbiome on drug efficacy and toxicity, there is often an incomplete understanding of the underlying mechanisms. Here, we dissect the inactivation of the cardiac drug digoxin by the gut Actinobacterium Eggerthella lenta. Transcriptional profiling, comparative genomics, and culture-based assays revealed a cytochrome-encoding operon up-regulated by Amylase digoxin, inhibited by arginine, absent in nonmetabolizing E. lenta strains, and predictive
of digoxin inactivation by the human gut microbiome. Pharmacokinetic studies using gnotobiotic mice revealed that dietary protein reduces the in vivo microbial metabolism of digoxin, with significant changes to drug concentration in the serum and urine. These results emphasize the importance of viewing pharmacology from the perspective of both our human and microbial genomes.”
“Background: Natural killer (NK) cells constitutively express high levels of Tim-3, an immunoregulatory molecule recently proposed to be a marker for mature and functional NK cells. Whether HIV-1 infection modulates the expression of Tim-3 on NK cells, or the levels of its ligand Galectin-9 (Gal-9), and how signaling through these molecules affects the NK cell response to HIV-1 remains inadequately understood.
Results: We analyzed Tim-3 and Gal-9 expression in a cohort of 85 individuals with early and chronic HIV-1 infection, and in 13 HIV-1 seronegative control subjects.