Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular protozoan parasite that infects many different vertebrate species asexually and undergoes a sexual cycle after infecting cats (http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/, 2013). Parasite oocysts are potentially introduced...
Biomedical scientists and biologists routinely consider how selection shapes the structure and function of proteins of interest. Less commonly, I suspect, do we consider how selection for attributes other than protein structure and function can favor or disfavor...
In his 1987 book, “The Evolution of Individuality,” Leo Buss addressed a fundamental biological question: “How could individual multicellular animals (known as metazoans), like sea anemones, insects, frogs, and humans arise?” Buss focused on a key challenge...
A central focus of recent research aimed at developing a vaccine for HIV-1 is the identification of potent broadly-neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs). Due to work from several laboratories, many such antibodies have now been identified, produced in quantity as...
The term “genetic code” is associated with a measure of ambiguity. For molecular biologists, “genetic code” has historically referred to a table that provides for each messenger RNA ribonucleotide triplet the corresponding amino acid that is incorporated into the...
