The evolution of genotypic mutation rates has been investigated in numerous theoretical and experimental studies. Mutations, however, occur not only when copying DNA, but also when building the phenotype, especially when translating and transcribing DNA to RNA and protein. Here we study the effect of such phenotypic mutations. We find a maximum phenotypic mutation rate, umax, that is compatible...

The majority of acute leukemias can be classified by the lineage of origin of blast cells as either myeloid, B Lymphoblastic (B-ALL) or T lymphoblastic. Acute leukemias are categorized by flow cytometry and now, increasingly, molecular results which help to determine whether the leukemia arises from the myeloid or lymphoid series. There does exist, however, an undefined or ambiguous group of le...

World J Pediatr, Vol 8 No 2 . May 15, 2012 . www.wjpch.com 177 Author Affi liations: Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143, USA (Seeley HH); Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA (Loomba-Albrecht LA, Butani L); Center for Nephrology and Metabolic Disorders, Laboratory for Molecular Diagnostics, Weisswasser,...

Many evolutionary studies require an understanding of phenotypic change. However, while analyses of phenotypic variation across pairs of evolutionary levels (populations or time steps) are well established, methods for testing hypotheses that compare evolutionary sequences across multiple levels are less developed. Here we describe a general analytical procedure for quantifying and comparing pa...

 Flowering period and longevity play important roles in determining the quality of commercial flowers. Marker-trait associations for eight flowering and 12 ornamental traits have been studied using a GLM and MLM analysis with a set of 2099 AFLP polymorphic markers in Chrysanthemum. The GLM model identified 453 markers for phenotypic traits whereas the MLM association analysis model revealed a t...