Homology

Who or what is responsible for the occurrence of life on earth, and possibly many other planets, is a question that has plagued humanity for thousands of years. Once life was present on the planet, scientists largely agree that natural selection, the theory presented by Charles Darwin, took place allowing the hundreds of various species to emerge from one common ancestor known as the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) (Christian, Brown & Benjamin 2013, p. 57). Theories of how life actually…

Introduction The field of telomere biology has been an active area of research in recent time, especially so following the work by Hayflick and Olovnikov. Expanding on his, Elizabeth Blackburn and Joseph Gall noticed that the end of the chromosomes from Tetrahymena thermophila contained the six base sequence TTGGGG iterated many times (Blackburn and Gall, 1978). Over the decades, literature has arisen that has revealed many things regarding telomeres. However, as with the case with many…

Introduction: Enzymes play a major role in biological systems to catalyze and control different reactions. The study of enzymes’ behaviors toward substrates and products is significant to understand various enzyme catalyzed reactions in living organisms. One of the most important enzymatic group is cytochrome P450 (CYP450) which contribute to the metabolism of many endogenous as well as exogenous substances such as drugs. Although there are several subtypes of CYP450 family, CYP450 1A1 is going…

Is Oxytocin a potential treatment for social deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders? A principal feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) is a deficit in social interaction and empathy. In animal and in (some human) studies, oxytocin administered as intranasal spray has demonstrated improved social interactions. Past and current studies have provided some genetic evidence that suggests oxytocin pathways in the brain might be deficient in patients with ASDs, although conflicting evidence has…

Everyone knows or has heard of “that family” who dresses up their dog in clothes and talks to them as if it they were a real child. The connection between pet and owner all relies on how the owner treats the animal. The emotional attention that many owners feel towards their pets may depend on the breed type of dog involved, but the way the any animal feels about their owners will differentiate from one species to another (Physiology Today - The Bond Between Pet And Owner). If you had a pig,…

Is Oxytocin a potential treatment for social deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders? A principal feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) is a deficit in social interaction and empathy. In animal and in (some human) studies, oxytocin administered as an intranasal spray has demonstrated improved social interactions (1-4). Past and current studies have provided some genetic evidence that suggests oxytocin pathways in the brain might be deficient in patients with ASDs, although conflicting…

performed the experiment on Agobacterium tumefaciens by straining and cloning the rRNA genes to find the sequence of DNA phosphate. It was propsed that there were two possible explanations of the low homology in the plant mitochondrial sequence which shows the eubacterial sequences. Either the mitochondrial sequence branched deeply and the similarity to A. tumefaciens is a coincidence, or the mitochondrial sequence is specifically related to the A. tumefaciens…

With natural selection its major driving mechanism, evolution is the change over time in the makeup of genetics of a population. Supported by evidence from many scientific methods, Charles Darwin, in On the Origin of Species, asserts that inheritable variations occur in individuals in a population. In the process known as natural selection, due to competition for limited resources, individuals with more favorable characteristics or phenotypes are more likely to survive and better reproduce,…

Introduction: Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders observed approximately in 1-3% of population, it has affected around 70 million people worldwide and nearly 90% of them are found in developing regions (Ngugi et al; 2010). The corresponding figure for India was estimated to be more than 12 million with 1% prevalence contributes nearly one-sixth of the global burden (Senthil Amudhan et al., 2015). Epilepsy is a brain disorder characterized by an enduring predisposition…

Sirtuins and Histone deactylases (HDACs) Eukaryotic DNA is packed in a high level structure called chromatin, resulting from the assembly of an elementary unit, the nucleosome, and an octameric structure obtained from eight proteins called histones [1]. Histone deacetylation is a reversible process whereby histone and non-histone protein transfer the acetyl moiety from acetyl co-enzyme A (CoA) to lysines while histone acetylation is the direct opposite process whereby acetyl groups are removed…