Molecular techniques that assess biodiversity through the analysis of a small segment of mitochondrial genome have been getting wide attention for inferring the mammalian diversity. Due to their highly conserved nature, specific mitochondrial genes offer a promising tool for phylogenetic analysis. However, there is no established criteria for selecting the typical mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) segm...

Mutations of mitochondrial DNA are linked to many human diseases. Despite the identification of a large number of variants in the mitochondrially encoded rRNA (mt-rRNA) genes, the evidence supporting their pathogenicity is, at best, circumstantial. Establishing the pathogenicity of these variations is of major diagnostic importance. Here, we aim to estimate the disruptive effect of mt-rRNA vari...

In March 2014, an infection with the nematode Dirofilaria repens was diagnosed in a German citizen in the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt. The patient had developed an itching subcutaneous nodule containing a female worm, which was identified as D. repens by 12S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) gene sequencing. Autochthonous human D. repens infections have not been described in Germany so far, ...

Author manuscript, published in "Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 28, 2 (2003) 261-75" Delsuc et al. Molecular systematics of armadillos 2 ABSTRACT The thirty living species of armadillos, anteaters and sloths (Mammalia: Xenarthra) represent one of the three major clades of placentals. Armadillos (Cingulata: Dasypodidae) are the earliest and most speciose xenarthran lineage with twenty-one...

BACKGROUND Substantial progress has been made in nutritional epigenetics, but little is known regarding whether mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) methylation is involved in this process. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to determine whether dietary lipid sources [various fatty acids (FAs)] modify mtDNA methylation. METHODS A total of 600 large yellow croakers (Larimichthys crocea) with an ...

Phylogenetic analyses, from polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-amplified 12S rRNA and 18S rRNA gene sequences from cochineal insects of the genus Dactylopius present in Mexico, showed that D. ceylonicus, D. confusus, and D. opuntiae are closely related. D. coccus constitutes a separate clade, and D. tomentosus is the most distantly related. Bacterial 16S rRNA sequences from all the Dactylopius sp...

Metasarcidae Kury, 1994 (Gonyleptoidea) is exclusively distributed in the Andean region of South America, from northern Peru to southern Bolivia. This contribution reviews family using traditional taxonomy and cladistics. The cladistic analysis based on total evidence (TE), maximum likelihood (ML) direct optimization molecular morphological characters. data matrix composed DNA sequences three m...