PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Nightshades' mating habits strike uneasy evolutionary balance

2010-10-22
(Press-News.org) Most flowering plants, equipped with both male and female sex organs, can fertilize themselves and procreate without the aid of a mate. But this may only present a short-term adaptive benefit, according to a team of researchers led by two University of Illinois at Chicago biologists, who report that long-term evolutionary survival of a species favors flowers that welcome pollen from another plant.

"We've shown that a strong, short-term advantage experienced by individuals that have sex with themselves can be offset by long-term advantages to plant species that strictly avoid self-fertilization," says Boris Igić, UIC assistant professor of biological sciences. The result is "an apparently unending competition between these two reproductive strategies," he said, "contributing to disparities in species diversity observed among different groups of plants."

The findings are reported in the Oct. 22 issue of Science by Igić and lead author Emma Goldberg, postdoctoral research associate in biological sciences.

Their study focused on Solanaceae, the large and diverse plant family commonly known as nightshades. It includes such important crop plants as potatoes, tomatoes and tobacco. Just under half of the known nightshade species cannot self-fertilize.

Goldberg and Igić measured the long-term effects of self-fertilization, which is caused by frequent mutations and is difficult to lose once a plant acquires it. The researchers applied a mathematical model to calculate the rate of accumulation of species, also called the diversification rate.

"We found those species that avoid self-fertilization diversify faster, giving them a long-term advantage," Goldberg said.

"It's a trade-off," Igić added. "The short-term benefits of mating assurance and ability to invade a new environment are pitted against long-term advantages of greater genetic diversity, allowing plants that avoid self-fertilization to have more offspring during unpredictable environmental changes."

Avoiding self-fertilization also allows plants to more easily keep beneficial mutations and provides a degree of protection against some harmful mutations, Igić said.

The findings underscore that both individual and species characteristics can strongly shape how a group of plants evolves and diversifies.

"The ability or inability to self-fertilize is subject to forces that act strongly, and in opposite directions," Goldberg said. "The balance between these opposing forces helps explain the diversity of plants within the nightshade family, and potentially many other plant groups."

INFORMATION: Other authors on the Science paper include Joshua Kohn of the University of California, San Diego; Russell Lande of Imperial College, London; Kelly Robertson of UIC; and Stephen Smith of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Malarial mosquitoes are evolving into new species, say researchers

2010-10-22
Two strains of the type of mosquito responsible for the majority of malaria transmission in Africa have evolved such substantial genetic differences that they are becoming different species, according to researchers behind two new studies published today in the journal Science. Over 200 million people globally are infected with malaria, according to the World Health Organisation, and the majority of these people are in Africa. Malaria kills one child every 30 seconds. Today's international research effort, co-led by scientists from Imperial College London, looks at ...

ESHRE publishes new PGD guidelines

2010-10-22
The four guidelines include one outlining the organisation of a PGD centre and three relating to the methods used: amplification-based testing, fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH)-based testing and polar body/embryo biopsy. "The guidelines are a detailed update to the Consortium's initial PGD guidelines, published in the same journal in 2005. They have been developed as a set which, taken together, form a complete best-practice compendium," said Gary Harton, chairman of ESHRE's PGD Consortium and Head of Molecular Genetics at Reprogenetics in Livingston, New Jersey. The ...

Forensic scientists use postmortem imaging-guided biopsy to determine natural causes of death

2010-10-22
Researchers found that the combination of computed tomography (CT), postmortem CT angiography (CTA) and biopsy can serve as a minimally invasive option for determining natural causes of death such as cardiac arrest, according to a study in the November issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (www.ajronline.org). In the last decade, postmortem imaging, especially CT, has gained increasing acceptance in the forensic field. However, CT has certain limitations in the assessment of natural death. "Vascular and organ pathologic abnormalities, for example, generally ...

Peripheral induction of Alzheimer's-like brain pathology in mice

2010-10-22
Pathological protein deposits linked to Alzheimer's disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy can be triggered not only by the administration of pathogenic misfolded protein fragments directly into the brain but also by peripheral administration outside the brain. This is shown in a new study done by researchers at the Hertie Institute of Clinical Brain Research (HIH, University Hospital Tübingen, University of Tübingen) and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), to be published in Science on October 21, 2010. Alzheimer's disease and a brain vascular ...

The sound of the underground! New acoustic early warning system for landslide prediction

2010-10-22
A new type of sound sensor system has been developed to predict the likelihood of a landslide. Thought to be the first system of its kind in the world, it works by measuring and analysing the acoustic behaviour of soil to establish when a landslide is imminent so preventative action can be taken. Noise created by movement under the surface builds to a crescendo as the slope becomes unstable and so gauging the increased rate of generated sound enables accurate prediction of a catastrophic soil collapse. The technique has been developed by researchers at Loughborough ...

Malaria research begins to bite

2010-10-22
Scientists at The University of Nottingham and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge have pin-pointed the 72 molecular switches that control the three key stages in the life cycle of the malaria parasite and have discovered that over a third of these switches can be disrupted in some way. Their research which has been funded by Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council (MRC) is a significant breakthrough in the search for cheap and effective vaccines and drugs to stop the transmission of a disease which kills up to a million children a year. Until ...

Value-added sulfur scrubbing

2010-10-22
Power plants that burn fossil fuels remain the main source of electricity generation across the globe. Modern power plants have scrubbers to remove sulfur compounds from their flue gases, which has helped reduce the problem of acid rain. Now, researchers in India have devised a way to convert the waste material produced by the scrubbing process into value-added products. They describe details in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution. Fossil fuels contain sulfur compounds that are released as sulfur dioxide during combustion. As such, flue gas desulfurisation ...

Authoritarian behavior leads to insecure people

Authoritarian behavior leads to insecure people
2010-10-22
Researchers from the University of Valencia (UV) have identified the effects of the way parents bring up their children on social structure in Spain. Their conclusions show that punishment, deprivation and strict rules impact on a family's self esteem. "The objective was to analyse which style of parental socialisation is ideal in Spain by measuring the psychosocial adjustment of children", Fernando García, co-author of the study and a researcher at the UV, tells SINC. The study, which has been published in the latest issue of the journal Infancia y Aprendizaje, was ...

Adverse neighborhood conditions greatly aggravate mobility problems from diabetes

Adverse neighborhood conditions greatly aggravate mobility problems from diabetes
2010-10-22
INDIANAPOLIS – A study published earlier this year in the peer reviewed online journal BMC Public Health has found that residing in a neighborhood with adverse living conditions such as low air quality, loud traffic or industrial noise, or poorly maintained streets, sidewalks and yards, makes mobility problems much more likely in late middle-aged African Americans with diabetes. "We followed a large group of African Americans for 3 years and found an extremely strong correlation between diabetes and adverse neighborhood conditions. The study participants were between ...

AFM tips from the microwave

AFM tips from the microwave
2010-10-22
Jena (21 October 2010) Scientists from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena (Germany) were successful in improving a fabrication process for Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) probe tips. Atomic Force Microscopy is able to scan surfaces so that even tiniest nano structures become visible. Knowledge about these structures is for instance important for the development of new materials and carrier systems for active substances. The size of the probe is highly important for the image quality as it limits the dimensions that can be visualized – the smaller the probe, the smaller ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Breaking free from dependence on rare resources! A domestic high-performance permanent magnet emerges!

Symptoms of long-COVID can last up to two years after infection with COVID-19

Violence is forcing women in Northern Ireland into homelessness, finds new report

Latin American intensivists denounce economic and cultural inequities in the global scientific publishing system

Older adults might be more resistant to bird flu infections than children, Penn research finds

Dramatic increase in research funding needed to counter productivity slowdown in farming

How chemistry and force etch mysterious spiral patterns on solid surfaces

Unraveling the mysteries of polycystic kidney disease

Mother’s high-fat diet can cause liver stress in fetus, study shows

Weighing in on a Mars water debate

Researchers ‘seq’ and find a way to make pig retinal cells to advance eye treatments

Re-purposed FDA-approved drug could help treat high-grade glioma

Understanding gamma rays in our universe through StarBurst

Study highlights noninvasive hearing aid 

NASA taps UTA to shape future of autonomous aviation

Mutations disrupt touch-based learning, study finds

Misha lived in zoos, but the elephant’s tooth enamel helps reconstruct wildlife migrations

Eat better, breathe easier? Research points to link between diet, lung cancer

Mesozoic mammals had uniform dark fur

Wartime destruction of Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine has long-term environmental consequences

NIH’s flat 15% funding policy is misguided and damaging

AI reveals new insights into the flow of Antarctic ice

Scientists solve decades-long Parkinson’s mystery

Spinning, twisted light could power next-generation electronics

A planetary boundary for geological resources: Limits of regional water availability

Astronomy’s dirty window to space

New study reveals young, active patients who have total knee replacements are unlikely to need revision surgery in their lifetime

Thinking outside the box: Uncovering a novel approach to brainwave monitoring

Combination immunotherapy before surgery may increase survival in people with head and neck cancer

MIT engineers turn skin cells directly into neurons for cell therapy

[Press-News.org] Nightshades' mating habits strike uneasy evolutionary balance