Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab

sea-maid submitted, created time 5 months 1 week (www.newscientist.com)

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

Ordinarily E. coli cannot process citrate. In fact, this trait is one of the things that researchers use to distinguish E. coli from other species. This team separated E. coli into twelve separate cultures and allowed it to divide. No matter how they replayed things, only extracts from the one citrate-plus culture ever re-developed citrate processing abilities

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Shrewd Snake Savors Deadly Meal

Novel 3′-phosphoadenosine-5′-phosphatases from extremely halotolerant Hortaea werneckii reveal insight into molecular determinants of salt tolerance of black yeasts

halophiles submitted, created time 1 year 3 months (www.sciencedirect.com)

Two novel 3′-phosphoadenosine-5′-phosphatases, HwHAL2A and HwHAL2B, have been cloned from saltern-inhabited extremely halotolerant yeast Hortaea werneckii, which are ubiquitous enzymes required for the removal of the cytotoxic 3′-phosphoadenosine-5′-phosphate produced during sulfur assimilation in eukaryotes. But addittionally it was shown that they considerably increased the tolerance to sodium and lithium ions when expressed in salt-sensitive S. cerevisiae

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One species, many genomes

bianjie submitted, created time 1 year 4 months (goto.mpg.de)

Adaptation to the environment has a stronger effect on the genome than anticipated.

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Compensatory Evolution in Response to a Novel RNA Polymerase: Orthologous Replacement of a Central Network Gene

alpha submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (mbe.oxfordjournals.org)

"Surprisingly, the T7 genome adapted to T3 RNAP also maintained high fitness when using T7 RNAP, suggesting that the extreme incompatibility of T7 elements with T3 RNAP is not an invariant property of divergence in these expression systems."

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Surviving the Breakup: The DNA Damage Checkpoint

BIOBOSS submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (openwetware.org)

[Full Text]In response to even a single chromosomal double-strand DNA break, cells enact the DNA damage checkpoint. This checkpoint triggers cell cycle arrest, providing time for the cell to repair damaged chromosomes before entering mitosis. This mechanism helps prevent the segregation of damaged or mutated chromosomes and thus promotes genomic stability

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