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...
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...
Influenza A viruses continue to be of enormous interest to biomedical researchers and clinicians alike. In addition to the annual influenza epidemics, which have been inferred to cause substantial excess mortality, there is the ever-present threat of a global...
A couple of months ago, my institution hosted a one-day symposium on phylogenetics. One of the speakers was John Avise, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the individual generally credited with originating the field of phylogeography. His talk and those...
Commentary on: M. Ackermann, B. Stecher, N. E. Freed, P. Songhet, W.-D. Hardt, and M. Doebeli (2008) Self-destructive cooperation mediated by phenotype noise. Nature 454:987-9 One of the most exciting developments in microbial population biology over the past few...