The world's oceans contain a complex mixture of micro-organisms that are for the most part, uncharacterized both genetically and biochemically. We report here a metagenomic study of the marine planktonic microbiota in which surface (mostly marine) water samples were analyzed as part of the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling expedition. These samples, collected across a several-thousand km transe...

  Background: Garlic is a valuable medicinal plant with variability in desirable morphological and physiological characteristics. The analysis of genetic diversity plays an important role in breeding programs. The RAPD technique could be very effective in detecting genetic variation in garlic.  Objective: The objective of the present work was to detect molecular polymorphism among Iranian garli...

The majority of vertebrate protocadherin (Pcdh) genes are clustered in a single genomic locus, and this remarkable genomic organization is highly conserved from teleosts to humans. These clustered Pcdhs are differentially expressed in individual neurons, they engage in homophilic trans-interactions as multimers and they are required for diverse neurodevelopmental processes, including neurite se...

Rotavirus genomic RNAs, derived from a series of human isolates that exhibit variability in the pattern of migration of the double-stranded RNA on polyacrylamide gels, were transferred to diazobenzyloxymethyl paper, and their sequence diversity was investigated. Hybridization of cDNA probes prepared from the 11 segments of rotavirus RNA indicated that considerable sequence diversity exists amon...

Bacteria represent the vast majority of biological diversity found on Earth. In this review, we focus on selected aspects of their genetic material, those providing insight into structural, functional, dynamic, and evolutionary aspects of their genomes. Bacterial chromosomes are far more dynamic than previously realized, and dozens of mechanisms giving rise to genomic plasticity are now underst...

The paper ‘Refined analyses suggest that recombination is a minor source of genomic diversity in Pseudomonas aeruginosa chronic cystic fibrosis infections’ by Williams et al. (2016) performs a new analysis on data from a recent paper of ours where we found that recombination plays a significant role in generating phenotypic and genomic diversity in P. aeruginosa populations taken from the lungs...

Because they are considered rare, balanced polymorphisms are often discounted as crucial constituents of genome-wide variation in sequence diversity. Despite its perceived rarity, however, long-term balancing selection can elevate genetic diversity and significantly affect observed divergence between species. Here, we discuss how ancestral balanced polymorphisms can be "sieved" by the speciatio...

The genetic diversity of 20 Iranian populations of Bunium persicum has been evaluated with random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers. Fresh leaves of seedlings from each population were used for genomic DNA extraction. Analysis of banding patterns of 15 RAPD primers and 17 AFLP primer combinations, revealed 192 (86%) and 228 (75%) polymorp...