Weird warbler reveals genetics of its mismatched colors eurekalert.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eurekalert.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
IMAGE: Sean Giery, Penn State
The research team found that salamander population sizes and pond chemistry remained stable over the last three decades. When averaged across the region, the overall frequency of each egg color morph also remained the same about 70% white egg masses in both 1990 and 2020 but in many cases the frequency within individual ponds changed drastically.
“At the scale of individual ponds, it’s an extremely dynamic system,” said Giery. “They don’t just reach one frequency and stay there. By focusing on individual ponds rather than just the region as a whole, we could tease apart what is driving these changes in population frequencies. In this case, we found two opposing evolutionary processes selection and drift.”
Launched during the pandemic, a team-based experience opens doors to students’ success
Biochemistry and molecular biology students taking BMB 490 write down their observations of cells while in the tissue culture room.Image: Emily Bell, Penn State
A new approach to undergraduate research
Seth Palmer
April 01, 2021
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Having to turn students away from the lab just didn’t sit well with professor Emily Bell.
“We know that being involved in research is a really valuable and important experience for students,” she said. “It changes the way they think about science, the way they interact with their other coursework. And it s super important for their career readiness and their ability to be competitive and get the jobs that they want.”
Why masses of salamander eggs come in two colors futurity.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from futurity.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Unusual DNA folding increases the rates of mutations
DNA sequences that can fold into shapes other than the classic double helix tend to have higher mutation rates than other regions in the human genome. New research by a team of Penn State scientists shows that the elevated mutation rate in these sequences plays a major role in determining regional variation in mutation rates across the genome. Deciphering the patterns and causes of regional variation in mutation rates is important both for understanding evolution and for predicting sites of new mutations that could lead to disease.
“Most of the time we think about DNA as the classic double helix; this basic form is referred to as ‘B-DNA,’” said Wilfried Guiblet, co-first author of the paper, a graduate student at Penn State at the time of research and now a postdoctoral scholar at the National Cancer Institute. “But, as much as 13% of the human genome can fold into different conformations called ‘non-B DNA.’ We wa