Diversity of Ape Pepsinogen Genes

Ape parasite origins of human malaria virulence genes

Antigens encoded by the var gene family are major virulence factors of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, exhibiting enormous intra- and interstrain diversity. Here we use network analysis to show that var architecture and mosaicism are conserved at multiple levels across the Laverania subgenus, based on var-like sequences from eight single-species and three multi-species Plasmod...

Unexplored Archaeal Diversity in the Great Ape Gut Microbiome

Archaea are habitual residents of the human gut flora but are detected at substantially lower frequencies than bacteria. Previous studies have indicated that each human harbors very few archaeal species. However, the low diversity of human-associated archaea that has been detected could be due to the preponderance of bacteria in these communities, such that relatively few sequences are classifi...

Genetic diversity of myostatin and calpastatin genes in Zandi sheep

Myostatin (MSTN) is an inhibitor of skeletal muscle growth, and a mutation in the gene coding region leads to increased muscling. Calpastatin (CAST) is a specific inhibitor of the ubiquitous calcium-dependent proteases, µ-calpain and m-calpain, found in mammalian tissues. In this study, genomic DNA was extracted from Zandi sheep blood samples. Gel monitoring and spectrophotometer methods were u...

High mutation rates in human and ape pseudoautosomal genes.

It has been suggested that recombination may be mutagenic, which, if true, would inflate intraspecies diversity and interspecies silent divergence in regions of high recombination. Here, we test this hypothesis comparing human/orangutan genome-wide non-coding divergence (K) to that in the pseudoautosomal genes which were reported to recombine much more frequently than the rest of the genome. We...

Estimation of serum pepsinogen.