1106 Once upon a time, the world seemed simple when viewed through the eyes of evolutionary biologists. All genomes were tightly controlled by various forms of natural selection. DNA encoded functional genes, and most mutations that occurred were rejected through negative selection. Those exceptional mutations that were beneficial substituted for the original gene variant (allele) and spread th...

Gradual changes in function of proteins in response to single changes in primary structure are often observed to occur and are a necessary condition for evolution by variation and natural selection at the protein level. A probabilistic (entropy theory) analysis of the effect of changes in primary structure on three-dimensional shape and function shows that such gradualism is based on the presen...

Competition plays a key role controlling tree growth in mixed forests. Contrary to monocultures, quantifying species mixing influence on suppose challenge since the presence of two or more requires estimate degree intra- and inter-specific competition among trees. Moreover, it is well known that aridity can also growth, especially Mediterranean Basin. In present context climate change, essentia...

Comparative studies of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and protein sequences have revealed two important characteristics ofmolecular evolution.One is the apparent uniformity of evolutionary rate; for example, if one compares human haemoglobin a with that of gorilla, horse and carp, one realizes that the difference almost linearly increases with the divergence time. Another characteristic is that th...

High rates of amino-acid sequence evolution have sometimes been considered to be diagnostic for genes undergoing adaptive change. However, two recent studies have shown that rapid evolution of amino-acid sequence can also be congruent with neutrality. The debate between neutralism and selectionism, which has dominated the field of molecular evolution for twenty years, has sometimes been charact...

Microorganisms interact with plants because plants offer a wide diversity of habitats including the phyllosphere (aerial plant part), the rhizosphere (zone of influence of the root system), and the endosphere (internal transport system) [3, 5]. Interactions of epiphytes, rhizophytes or endophytes may be detrimental or beneficial for either the microorganism or the plant and may be classified as...

Because of its strongly theoretical nature, evolutionary biology is a field full of controversy. For example, in the late 1970s, UCLA hosted a forum in which two famous biologists, Motoo Kimura and Francisco Ayala, engaged in a heated debate. Kimura had posited in the late 1960s that molecular evolution is dominated by neutral processes, i.e., genetic drift and random mutation. Ayala argued for...