(Press-News.org) This press release is available in French.
Quebec City, December 13, 2012—A study published by Université Laval researchers and their colleagues from the Canadian Forest Service reveals that the genome of conifers such as spruce, pine, and fir has remained very much the same for over 100 million years. This remarkable genomic stability explains the resemblance between today's conifers and fossils dating back to the days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Details of this finding are presented in a recent issue of the journal BMC Biology.
The team supervised by Professor Jean Bousquet, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Forest and Environmental Genomics, came to this conclusion after analyzing the genome of conifers and comparing it to that of flowering plants. Both plant groups stem from the same ancestor but diverged some 300 million years ago.
Researchers compared the genome macrostructure for 157 gene families present both in conifers and flowering plants. They observed that the genome of conifers has remained particularly stable for at least 100 million years, while that of flowering plants has undergone major changes in the same period. "That doesn't mean there haven't been smaller scale modifications such as genetic mutations," points out Jean Bousquet. "However, the macrostructure of the conifer genome has been remarkably stable over the ages," adds the professor from the Université Laval Faculty of Forestry, Geography, and Geomatics.
This great stability goes hand in hand with the low speciation rate of conifers. The world is currently home to only 600 species of conifers, while there are over 400,000 species of flowering plants. "Conifers appear to have achieved a balance with their environment very early," remarks Professor Bousquet. "Still today, without artifice, these plants thrive over much of the globe, particularly in cold climates. In contrast, flowering plants are under intense evolutionary pressure as they battle for survival and reproduction," he concludes.
###
In addition to Bousquet, the study's coauthors are Nathalie Pavy, Betty Pelgas, Jérôme Laroche, Philippe Rigault, and Nathalie Isabel.
This project was made possible thanks to the financial support of Genome Canada, Génome Québec, Natural Resources Canada, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Information:
Jean Bousquet
Faculty of Forestry, Geography, and Geomatics
Université Laval
418-656-3493
Jean.Bousquet@sbf.ulaval.ca
Your Christmas tree and its genome have remained very much the same over the last 100 million years
2012-12-13
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
OU study suggests the bacterial ecology that lives on humans has changed in the last 100 years
2012-12-13
A University of Oklahoma-led study has demonstrated that ancient DNA can be used to understand ancient human microbiomes. The microbiomes from ancient people have broad reaching implications for understanding recent changes to human health, such as what good bacteria might have been lost as a result of our current abundant use of antibiotics and aseptic practices.
Cecil M. Lewis Jr., professor of anthropology in the OU College of Arts and Sciences and director of the OU Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, and Raul Tito, OU Research Associate, led the research study that ...
Hospital-based neurologists worry about career burnout
2012-12-13
MAYWOOD, Il. - A survey has identified career burnout as a significant problem among neurologists who predominantly work with hospital inpatients.
Nearly 29 percent of these "neurohospitalists" said they had experienced burnout, and 45.8 percent said they were concerned about burnout but had not yet experienced it. (Burnout was defined as maintaining a schedule so burdensome as to limit the time a physician will or could spend as a neurohospitalist.)
Results were published in the December, 2012 issue of Neurology® Clinical Practice. Among the co-authors is Jose Biller, ...
Predicting risk of arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death: There's a computer model for that
2012-12-13
VIDEO:
Scientists are using "virtual hearts " to better understand risk in real-world patients. Researcher Coeli Lopes, Ph.D., University of Rochester Medical Center, assistant professor at the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute, describes...
Click here for more information.
A computer model of the heart wall predicted risk of irregular heart rhythms and sudden cardiac death in patients, paving the way for the use of more complex cardiac models to calculate the ...
New policy brief examines impact of occupational injuries and illnesses among low-wage workers
2012-12-13
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Low-wage workers, who make up a large and growing share of the U.S. workforce, are especially vulnerable to financial hits that can result from on-the-job injuries and illnesses, according to a policy brief released today by researchers at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS). The policy brief, "Mom's off Work 'Cause She Got Hurt: The Economic Impact of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses in the U.S.'s Growing Low-Wage Workforce," was released along with a white paper showing that such workplace injuries and ...
Time restrictions on TV advertisements ineffective in reducing youth exposure to alcohol ads
2012-12-13
Efforts to reduce underage exposure to alcohol advertising by implementing time restrictions have not worked, according to new research from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Dutch Institute for Alcohol Policy. The report, published in the Journal of Public Affairs, confirms what Dutch researchers had already learned in that country: time restrictions on alcohol advertising actually increase teen exposure, because companies move the advertising to late night.
In 2009, Dutch regulators sought ...
'Curiosity' can be positioned with eclipses
2012-12-13
Observations from 'Curiosity' when Mar's moon Phobos crosses in front of the sun, like in September, help us to understand exactly where the rover is on the red planet. Researchers at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) have developed a method for achieving precisely this.
The exact location of Curiosity on the surface of Mars is determined using data transmitted from its antennas as well as the space probes that orbit the red planet. It is very unlikely that these systems would fail but in such an eventuality there would be an alternative for determining the ...
Uncovering a flaw in drug testing for chronic anxiety disorder
2012-12-13
Pre-clinical trials — the stage at which medications or therapies are tested on animals like laboratory mice — is a crucial part of drug development. It's only then that scientists can assess benefits and side effects before a drug is administered to patients.
Now, Prof. Ilan Golani of Tel Aviv University's Department of Zoology and Sagol School for Neuroscience and his fellow researchers Prof. Yoav Benjamini of TAU's Department of Statistics and Operations Research and the Sagol School of Neuroscience, and Dr. Ehud Fonio of the Weizmann Institute are questioning the ...
UAlberta medical researchers discover new potential chemotherapy
2012-12-13
Medical researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered that knocking out a particular "partner" gene is the Achilles' heel of some cancers.
Cancer causing genes often have a partner in crime, meaning when either of the two genes is active in cancer cells, the tumour grows. The challenge for researchers has been pinpointing the genes’ “lethal partners.” Loss of one of the partners alone isn’t deadly to the cell, but if both are gotten rid of, the cancer cells are destroyed.
Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry researcher Michael Weinfeld and his collaborators, ...
New technique for minimally invasive robotic kidney cancer surgery
2012-12-13
DETROIT – Urologists at Henry Ford Hospital have developed a new technique that could make minimally invasive robotic partial nephrectomy procedures the norm, rather than the exception for kidney cancer patients. The technique spares the kidney, eliminates long hospital stays and provides better outcomes by giving the surgeon more time to perform the procedure.
Dubbed ICE for Intracorporeal Cooling and Extraction, the technique may allow more kidney cancer patients to avoid conventional open surgery – now used in the vast majority of cases – and its possible complications, ...
Regenstrief study finds that generic drugs often have incorrect safety labeling
2012-12-13
INDIANAPOLIS -- Despite U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations requiring generic medications to carry identical warnings to those on corresponding brand-name products, a study by Regenstrief Institute researchers has found that more than two-thirds of generic drugs have safety-warning labels that differ from the equivalent brand-name drug.
The investigators reviewed 9,105 product labels for over 1,500 drugs available on DailyMed, an online repository of labeling information maintained by the FDA and the National Library of Medicine. Of the 1,040 drugs with more ...