Hereditary Material Research Articles

Mendelism in the course of biology of the new ukrainian school

The article draws attention to the discrepancy between the teaching of Mendelism in the secondary school biology course and the level of modern genetics. It is pointed out the shift of emphasis in teaching the laws of inheritance and the simplified understanding of Mendelism by reducing it to three laws. The reason for this can be seen in the unjustified giving to the results obtained by Mendel in the genetic experiment, the status of laws, which, without taking into account modern scientific achievements, uncritically pass from textbook to textbook. It is pointed out the need in the new Ukrainian school, when teaching the basics of classical genetics, to take into account the latest achievements of genetics and suppress Mendelian results not as laws, but as data of a genetic experiment, which became the basis for a paradigm shift in the understanding of the phenomena of heredity – a transition from the idea of fused heredity to the theory of hereditary discreteness material. It is proposed to present Mendel’s achievements to students as one fundamental law of discreteness of heredity, which takes a worthy place in the series of ideas about the discreteness of matter and energy.

Audacity of Gene Therapy.

Since the identification of DNA as the hereditary material, therapeutic advances have focused on gene therapy and allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplants for inherited diseases. Despite successes in treating conditions like β-thalassaemia and sickle cell disease, challenges such as insertional oncogenesis and immunogenicity persist. Future efforts must prioritize improving vector safety, refining manufacturing processes and expanding access to gene therapy, to fully realize its potential.

In silico functional analysis of DNA repair proteins (OGG1, MYH) in Arabidopsis thaliana

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a hereditary material found in every living organism. However, every organism is exposed to endogenous and exogenous an agent which causes damage to DNA molecules. Even though genetic variation is important for evolution, every organism requires genetic stability for survival. Not only it is needed for DNA to replicate accurately but also several DNA repair mechanisms are used to fix the damage which occurred in DNA. A detailed structure analysis along with docking site and metabolic pathway prediction were used to confirm that these proteins are involved in DNA repair mechanisms. This study investigated OGG1 and MYH proteins from Arabidopsis thaliana, and showed their interaction with predicted partners, focusing on their detailed interactome and 3D structure predictions. This study concluded that OGG1 and MYH are not only found in DNA repair mechanisms but also show strong functions in DNA replication and the development of plant and cell cycle.

William Lawrence Tower's Beetles: Experimental Evolution and the Manipulation of Inheritance.

William Lawrence Tower's work on the evolution of the Colorado Potato Beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata), documenting the environmental induction of mutation and speciation, made him a leading figure in experimental genetics during the first decade of the 20th century. His research program served as a model for other experimental evolution studies seeking to demonstrate the environmental modification of inheritance. Tower enjoyed the support of influential figures in the field, despite well-known problems that plagued Tower's earlier academic career. The validity of his genetic work, and other findings reported by Tower, were later challenged. The Tower affair illustrates how questionable and possibly fraudulent scientific practices can be tolerated to explore certain experimental directions and theoretical frameworks, particularly at the frontier of expanding disciplines. When needed, those explorations can be forestalled or extinguished by exploiting conspicuous vulnerabilities of rogue practitioners. In Tower's case, both unrefuted allegations of scientific misconduct and personal problems dissolved his institutional support, leading to a swift ouster from academic science. Tower's downfall discredited soft inheritance and neo-Lamarckian conceptions in the field of experimental genetics, facilitating the discipline's embrace of a hard inheritance model that featured a hereditary material resistant to environmental modification.

Tooth as a vital source of DNA in forensic odontology: Recent perspective

DNA has been the hereditary material of almost all organisms, including humans. In recent years, DNA fingerprinting technique has been the most renowned method used in forensics for human identification. Extracting DNA from routinely used samples becomes very challenging in degraded and fragmented human remains, i.e., in cases of incineration, mutilation, and fire. Due to the unique placement of teeth in the jaw and their composition, DNA material present gets additional protection compared to bones or other sources of DNA. Hence, it frequently becomes the only source of DNA that would be available in such situations for identification. DNA fingerprinting helps unravel the mysteries within the mouth, including the manifestations of diseases in the oral cavity. There have been highly improved methods described for analyzing various forensic scenarios and DNA extractions. Identifying the deceased victims, the missing person, the masked culprits involved in crime, the paternity issues, interpretation of genetic diseases, and determining the ancestry account for some uses of DNA fingerprinting. This review briefly summarizes recent literature and current knowledge of forensic odontology, DNA content, and distribution in teeth and its preservation. This also intends to emphasize the role of the tooth being a valuable source of DNA and thereby discusses some of the methods of recovery of DNA from teeth, ways of DNA analysis, and highlights the benefits and challenges regarding the DNA extraction protocol in the field of forensic odontology.

Buckling of Stiffened Heterogeneous Shells Taking into Account Material Creep

The authors propose a mathematical model of shell structures taking into account the linear theory of hereditary material creep. This model is based on the total potential strain energy functional. Shells are reinforced with stiffeners, and the contact between the stiffener and the shell skin along a strip is taken into account. The Ritz method is applied to the functional, and a system of algebraic or integro-algebraic equations is found. The resulting system is first solved as a linear system (without account for the terms reflecting material creep), and the state of the structure under the specified load is determined. Then the iterative method is used to solve the creep problem for a given value of time. The paper presents the results of studying stiffened shallow shells of double curvature made of reinforced concrete under uniformly distributed load. The buckling of shells occurs over time as a result of the development of creep strains. Values of the buckling load as a result of material creep are found. It is shown that stresses are redistributed over the shell field over time and the maximum stress is observed near the contour of the structure.

GENBANK A JACKPOT OF GENETIC INFORMATION

Genbank is a fundamental vault that assumes a crucial part in protecting and defending the hereditary variety of different living beings, especially plants, creatures, and microorganisms. This storehouse fills in as a critical asset for specialists, researchers, and agriculturalists universally, giving admittance to a broad assortment of hereditary material that holds the way to improving harvest strength, efficiency, and versatility notwithstanding developing natural difficulties. Through fastidious indexing, stockpiling, and curation of assorted hereditary assets, genbanks contribute essentially to the protection of important hereditary data, empowering the feasible improvement of agribusiness, biotechnology, and biodiversity preservation. The theoretical reveals insight into the basic meaning of Genbanks in encouraging agrarian maintainability and biodiversity preservation, underscoring the basic need to maintain and advance the ceaseless development and usage of these significant archives to improve people in the future. Keywords: Genetic diversity, DNA sequencing, Bioinformatics, Plant and animal genomes, Conservation genetics, Genetic resources, Germplasm, Biodiversity conservation.

Characteristics of the families of the herd of the Sychevka breed by productive and genetic indicators

An analysis of the genetic structure using marker alleles of the EAB locus and an assessment of the productive qualities of the families of cows of the Sychevka breed of the pedigree farm KP "Rybkovskoe" of the Smolensk region is presented. In the genotypes of representatives of families with a frequency of more than 5%, there are EAB alleles of the Holstein breed: Y1A`1, G2Y2E`1Q`, O2A`2J`2K`O`, B2O1, and the Sychevka breed: O1I`Q`, b, O1Y2E`3G`G``, which indicates the presence of hereditary material of both breeds. The average milk yield for maximum lactation in cows of the families was 5624kg of milk, with a fat content of 3.91%, protein 3.28%. In the best cows of the families, milk productivity reached 9651kg of milk, 3.71% fat, 3.28% protein for maximum lactation. Thirty percent of descendants from the families of Laskovaya 7114 and Kladi 8080 have a milk yield of over 6000 kg, with a fat content in milk of 3.82% and higher, and protein - over 3.35%. Milk yield in cows, on average in the group by the third lactation compared to the first increases by 970 kg of milk or 22%, which is largely due to the milking of animals in the process of their use. The greatest increase (41%) in milk yield to full-age lactation is observed in animals with the alleles E`3G`G`` (+1681kg) and B1G3O1T1A`1B`E`3F`2Q` (+1706kg). Cows with the EAB allele B1G2O1 are different by an increased (by 40%) period of productive use, and, as a result, lifetime milk yield, they are 42% higher than the average for families. Cows with the marker allele P1QA`1J`2E`1I` have lifetime milk yield indicators 69.5% higher than the average for families.

Mitochondrial DNA in Human Diversity and Health: From the Golden Age to the Omics Era.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a small fraction of our hereditary material. However, this molecule has had an overwhelming presence in scientific research for decades until the arrival of high-throughput studies. Several appealing properties justify the application of mtDNA to understand how human populations are-from a genetic perspective-and how individuals exhibit phenotypes of biomedical importance. Here, I review the basics of mitochondrial studies with a focus on the dawn of the field, analysis methods and the connection between two sides of mitochondrial genetics: anthropological and biomedical. The particularities of mtDNA, with respect to inheritance pattern, evolutionary rate and dependence on the nuclear genome, explain the challenges of associating mtDNA composition and diseases. Finally, I consider the relevance of this single locus in the context of omics research. The present work may serve as a tribute to a tool that has provided important insights into the past and present of humankind.

Agricultural economics: a discipline in crisis?

ABSTRACT Agricultural economists have continuously raised questions about their role in the wider economy and society since the discipline's establishment. This led to continuous reinvention, development and stretching of the discipline's boundaries. We have seen the same critique by scholars in other disciplines; many of these evolved to thrive or regressed to die. This begs the question, is the agricultural economics discipline evolving and adapting to change or regressing and facing extinction? To answer this evolutionary question, I use the three key pillars that make up the hereditary material of a discipline as a conceptual framework: research, teaching and association. I use several data sets to diagnose the health of each of these pillars to ultimately comment on the health of the discipline. Our findings indicate the weakest pillar as the association. Although our research and teaching pillars are not as strong as we want them to be, we are in the process of reinforcement. In conclusion, the agricultural economics discipline is not in crisis, at least not yet. I also acknowledge that the emergence of crisis does not always lead to the end of a discipline, but it promotes educational reflection and reform to lead to disciplinary evolution.

101 years ago: Hermann Muller's remarkable insight.

More than 20 years before DNA was identified as the hereditary material, the Drosophila geneticist, Hermann Muller, envisioned the fundamental principles that such a molecule must have: to be auto-assembling and to be mutable but then again stable. He followed his prescient review of these properties with a remarkable prediction: learning about the hereditary material and its properties would not come from studying Drosophila, but from studying bacteria and their bacteriophages.

Genetic Diversity, Conservation, and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources.

Plant genetic resources (PGRs) are the total hereditary material, which includes all the alleles of various genes, present in a crop species and its wild relatives. They are a major resource that humans depend on to increase farming resilience and profit. Hence, the demand for genetic resources will increase as the world population increases. There is a need to conserve and maintain the genetic diversity of these valuable resources for sustainable food security. Due to environmental changes and genetic erosion, some valuable genetic resources have already become extinct. The landraces, wild relatives, wild species, genetic stock, advanced breeding material, and modern varieties are some of the important plant genetic resources. These diverse resources have contributed to maintaining sustainable biodiversity. New crop varieties with desirable traits have been developed using these resources. Novel genes/alleles linked to the trait of interest are transferred into the commercially cultivated varieties using biotechnological tools. Diversity should be maintained as a genetic resource for the sustainable development of new crop varieties. Additionally, advances in biotechnological tools, such as next-generation sequencing, molecular markers, in vitro culture technology, cryopreservation, and gene banks, help in the precise characterization and conservation of rare and endangered species. Genomic tools help in the identification of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and novel genes in plants that can be transferred through marker-assisted selection and marker-assisted backcrossing breeding approaches. This article focuses on the recent development in maintaining the diversity of genetic resources, their conservation, and their sustainable utilization to secure global food security.

Epigenetic influences and brain development

In recent years, the amount of scientific data on the involvement of epigenetic processes in the regulation of brain development in postnatal ontogenesis has been rapidly growing. The article provides an overview of scientific research on the mechanisms of epigenetic influences on brain development. Information was searched in the Scopus, Web of Science, MedLine, The Cochrane Library, PubMed, Pedro, Scholar, eLibrary, CyberLeninka and RSCI databases for the period 1940-2022 by keywords: brain development, epigenetics, neuroontogenesis, methylation, histone modifications, chromatin remodeling, non-coding RNAs. Today, the mechanisms of epigenetic influence on the genome include DNA and RNA methylation, covalent modification of histones, chromatin remodeling, and the influence of non-coding RNAs. Epigenetic modifications are often reversible and provide the necessary plasticity for the response of progenitor cells to environmental signals. The influence of each of these factors on the neurodevelopment is considered. The possibility of transsynaptic transmission of hereditary material by means of circular RNA is indicated. The main ways of microRNA influence on brain development are presented and their universality as an «overgenic» regulator of organism adaptation to external conditions is indicated. Data on the relationship of long non-coding RNAs with the regulation of the functional activity of oligodendroglia are presented. Also, the data presented indicate the paths to the pathogenetically determined prevention of congenital brain pathology.

Epigenetics for crop adaptation to climate change

Epigenetics for crop adaptation to climate change

DPB-NBFnet: Using neural Bellman-Ford networks to predict DNA-protein binding.

DNA is a hereditary material that plays an essential role in micro-organisms and almost all other organisms. Meanwhile, proteins are a vital composition and principal undertaker of microbe movement. Therefore, studying the bindings between DNA and proteins is of high significance from the micro-biological point of view. In addition, the binding affinity prediction is beneficial for the study of drug design. However, existing experimental methods to identifying DNA-protein bindings are extremely expensive and time consuming. To solve this problem, many deep learning methods (including graph neural networks) have been developed to predict DNA-protein interactions. Our work possesses the same motivation and we put the latest Neural Bellman-Ford neural networks (NBFnets) into use to build pair representations of DNA and protein to predict the existence of DNA-protein binding (DPB). NBFnet is a graph neural network model that uses the Bellman-Ford algorithms to get pair representations and has been proven to have a state-of-the-art performance when used to solve the link prediction problem. After building the pair representations, we designed a feed-forward neural network structure and got a 2-D vector output as a predicted value of positive or negative samples. We conducted our experiments on 100 datasets from ENCODE datasets. Our experiments indicate that the performance of DPB-NBFnet is competitive when compared with the baseline models. We have also executed parameter tuning with different architectures to explore the structure of our framework.

The Ring World: Eversion of Small Double-Stranded Polynucleotide Circlets at the Origin of DNA Double Helix, RNA Polymerization, Triplet Code, Twenty Amino Acids, and Strand Asymmetry.

It is not entirely clear why, at some stage in its evolution, terrestrial life adopted double-stranded DNA as the hereditary material. To explain this, we propose that small, double-stranded, polynucleotide circlets have special catalytic properties. We then use this proposal as the basis for a 'view from here' that we term the Circlet hypothesis as part of a broader Ring World. To maximize the potential explanatory value of this hypothesis, we speculate boldly about the origins of several of the fundamental characteristics and briefly describe the main methods or treatments applied. The principal prediction of the paper is that the highly constrained, conformational changes will occur preferentially in dsDNA, dsRNA and hybrid RNA-DNA circlets that are below a critical size (e.g., 306 bp) and that these will favor the polymerization of precursors into RNA and DNA. We conclude that the Circlet hypothesis and the Ring World therefore have the attraction of offering the same solution to the fundamental problems probably confronting both the earliest cells and the most recent ones.

A Functional Carbohydrate Degrading Enzyme Potentially Acquired by Horizontal Gene Transfer in the Genome of the Soil Invertebrate Folsomia candida.

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is defined as the acquisition by an organism of hereditary material from a phylogenetically unrelated organism. This process is mostly observed among bacteria and archaea, and considered less likely between microbes and multicellular eukaryotes. However, recent studies provide compelling evidence of the evolutionary importance of HGT in eukaryotes, driving functional innovation. Here, we study an HGT event in Folsomia candida (Collembola, Hexapoda) of a carbohydrate-active enzyme homologous to glycosyl hydrase group 43 (GH43). The gene encodes an N-terminal signal peptide, targeting the product for excretion, which suggests that it contributes to the diversity of digestive capacities of the detritivore host. The predicted α-L-arabinofuranosidase shows high similarity to genes in two other Collembola, an insect and a tardigrade. The gene was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli using a cell-free protein expression system. The expressed protein showed activity against p-nitrophenyl-α-L-arabinofuranoside. Our work provides evidence for functional activity of an HGT gene in a soil-living detritivore, most likely from a bacterial donor, with genuine eukaryotic properties, such as a signal peptide. Co-evolution of metazoan GH43 genes with the Panarthropoda phylogeny suggests the HGT event took place early in the evolution of this ecdysozoan lineage.

Gene conversion: a non-Mendelian process integral to meiotic recombination

Meiosis is undoubtedly the mechanism that underpins Mendelian genetics. Meiosis is a specialised, reductional cell division which generates haploid gametes (reproductive cells) carrying a single chromosome complement from diploid progenitor cells harbouring two chromosome sets. Through this process, the hereditary material is shuffled and distributed into haploid gametes such that upon fertilisation, when two haploid gametes fuse, diploidy is restored in the zygote. During meiosis the transient physical connection of two homologous chromosomes (one originally inherited from each parent) each consisting of two sister chromatids and their subsequent segregation into four meiotic products (gametes), is what enables genetic marker assortment forming the core of Mendelian laws. The initiating events of meiotic recombination are DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) which need to be repaired in a certain way to enable the homologous chromosomes to find each other. This is achieved by DSB ends searching for homologous repair templates and invading them. Ultimately, the repair of meiotic DSBs by homologous recombination physically connects homologous chromosomes through crossovers. These physical connections provided by crossovers enable faithful chromosome segregation. That being said, the DSB repair mechanism integral to meiotic recombination also produces genetic transmission distortions which manifest as postmeiotic segregation events and gene conversions. These processes are non-reciprocal genetic exchanges and thus non-Mendelian.

Conformational characterization of duplex DNA with solution-state NMR spectroscopy

DNA is the hereditary material for living organisms. Understanding the structural features of DNA is essential to comprehend various biological processes. This review outlines the application of solution-state NMR methods to study the structure and dynamics of duplex DNA. A brief overview of the context of NMR in the earlier days of nucleic acids research is discussed. Sample preparation methods and pertinent NMR measurables are introduced, followed by sequential resonance assignment protocol of DNA duplexes. A summary of results obtained from the application of NMR methodology to compare, contrast, and validate initial crystal crystallographic studies of DNA structure, especially the Drew-Dickerson dodecamer and A-tract sequences, is presented. This is followed by a survey of structural insights obtained in studies involving sequence-specific characteristics and mispairs. Results from relaxations experiments that reveal base pairs opening dynamics and short lived transient states of DNA is summarized. Overall, this review aims to introduce the atomistic characterization of DNA using NMR spectroscopy to a beginner level researcher.

Doprinos medicinske sestre u praćenju rasta i razvoja dece sa Daunovim sindromom

Introduction: Down syndrome is a chromosomal disorder, which occurs when a third copy of the whole or part of the 21st chromosome in human hereditary material is present. Objective: To consider the activities of the nurse in monitoring the growth and development of children with Down syndrome, as well as differences in progress compared to healthy peers. Method: The study group consisted of N 21 subjects, children and adolescents, with Down syndrome. The control group consisted of the same number of healthy children who met the basic criteria of matching with the study group according to gender and age. Descriptive method and indirect observation method - documentation analysis were used. Documentation sheet was constructed. Results with discussion: The children with Down syndrome lag behind healthy children, more or less, in each observed segment. They are born in term, with an Apgar score in the range of 5-10, but with smaller body weight, body length and head volume, in which they lag behind until the end of the school period. Dentition occurs later in relation to healthy children, and they also have a smaller number of teeth. They also lag behind in the development of basic mental functions. They achieve most of the milestones, but at a later age. Conclusion: Children with Down syndrome lag behind in complete psychophysical development in relation to healthy children of the same age. The nurse has a multiple role in monitoring the growth and development and this improves the quality of the provided health services.