In the beginning was the phase separation

The question of the origin of life remains one of the oldest unanswered scientific questions. A team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now shown for the first time that phase separation is an extremely efficient way of controlling the selection of chemical building blocks and providing advantages to certain molecules.

A team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has shown for the first time, that phase separation is an extremely
efficient way of controlling the selection of chemical building blocks, providing advantages to certain molecules.
This simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life. Left: clear solution; right: inside
 the tiny oil droplets instable molecules survive longer [Credit: Andreas Battenberg/TUM]

Life needs energy. Without energy, cells cannot move or divide, not even basic functions such as the production of simple proteins could be maintained. If energy is lacking, more complex connections disintegrate quickly, early life would die immediately.

Chemist Job Boekhoven and his team at TUM have now succeeded in using phase separation to find a mechanism in simple molecules that enables extremely unstable molecules such as those found in the primordial soup to have a higher degree of stability. They could survive longer, even if they had to survive a period without external energy supply.

The principle of simplicity

Job Boekhoven and his team were looking for a simple mechanism with primitive molecules that could produce life-like properties. "Most likely, molecules were simple in the primordial soup," says Boekhoven. The researchers investigated what happens when they "fed" various carboxylic acid molecules with high-energy carbodiimide condensing agents, thus bringing them out of equilibrium.

The reaction produces unstable anhydrides. In principle, these non-equilibrium products quickly disintegrate into carboxylic acids again. The scientists showed that the anhydrides that survived the longest were those that could form a kind of oil droplet in the aqueous environment.

Single droplets under a fluorescence microscope [Credit: Marta Tena-Solsona/TUM]

Molecules in the garage

The effect can also be seen externally: the initially clear solution becomes milky. The lack of water in the oil droplets is like a protection because anhydrides need water to disintegrate back into carboxylic acids.

Boekhoven explains the principle of phase separation with an analogy: "Imagine an old and rusty car: Leave it outside in the rain, and it continues to rust and decomposes because rusting is accelerated by water. Put it in the garage, and it stops rusting because you separate it from the rain."

In a way, a similar process occurs in the primordial soup experiment: Inside the oil droplet (garage) with the long-chain anhydride molecules there is no water, so its molecules survive longer. If the molecules compete with each other for energy, again those that can protect themselves by forming oil droplets are likelier to survive, while their competitors get hydrolyzed.

Next goal: viable information carriers

Since the mechanism of phase separation is so simple, it can possibly be extended to other types of molecular aggregations with life-like properties such as DNA, RNA or self-dividing vesicles. Studies have shown that these bubbles can divide spontaneously. "Soon we hope to turn primitive chemistry into a self-replicating information carrier that is protected from decay to a certain extent," says Boekhoven.

The study is published in Nature Communications.

Source: Technical University of Munich [May 23, 2018]

Far from special: Humanity's tiny DNA differences are 'average' in animal kingdom

Researchers report important new insights into evolution following a study of mitochondrial DNA from about 5 million specimens covering about 100,000 animal species.

Today's study, "Why should mitochondria define species?" published as an open-access article in the journal
Human Evolution,builds on earlier work by Drs. Stoeckle and Thayer, including an examination of the
mitochondrial genetic diversity of humans vs. our closest living and extinct relatives. The amount of
color variation within each red box of the Klee diagram illustrates the far greater mitochondrial
diversity among chimpanzees and bonobos than among living humans
[Credit: The Rockefeller University]

Mining "big data" insights from the world's fast-growing genetic databases and reviewing a large literature in evolutionary theory, researchers at The Rockefeller University in New York City and the Biozentrum at the University of Basel in Switzerland, published several conclusions today in the journal Human Evolution. Among them:

• - In genetic diversity terms, Earth's 7.6 billion humans are anything but special in the animal kingdom. The tiny average genetic difference in mitochondrial sequences between any two individual people on the planet is about the same as the average genetic difference between a pair of the world's house sparrows, pigeons or robins. The typical difference within a species, including humans, is 0.1% or 1 in 1,000 of the "letters" that make up a DNA sequence.

• - Genetic variation - the average difference in mitochondria DNA between two individuals of the same species - does not increase with population size. Because evolution is relentless, however, the lack of genetic variation offers insights into the timing of a species' emergence and its maintenance.

• - The mass of evidence supports the hypothesis that most species, be it a bird or a moth or a fish, like modern humans, arose recently and have not had time to develop a lot of genetic diversity. The 0.1% average genetic diversity within humanity today corresponds to the divergence of modern humans as a distinct species about 100,000 - 200,000 years ago - not very long in evolutionary terms. The same is likely true of over 90% of species on Earth today.

• - Genetically the world "is not a blurry place." Each species has its own specific mitochondrial sequence and other members of the same species are identical or tightly similar. The research shows that species are "islands in sequence space" with few intermediate "stepping stones" surviving the evolutionary process.

Among 1st "big data" insights from a growing collection of mitochondrial DNA

"DNA barcoding" is a quick, simple technique to identify species reliably through a short DNA sequence from a particular region of an organism. For animals, the preferred barcode regions are in mitochondria - cellular organelles that power all animal life.

The new study, "Why should mitochondria define species?" relies largely on the accumulation of more than 5 million mitochondrial barcodes from more than 100,000 animal species, assembled by scientists worldwide over the past 15 years in the open access GenBank database maintained by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information.

The researchers have made novel use of the collection to examine the range of genetic differences within animal species ranging from bumblebees to birds and reveal surprisingly minute genetic variation within most animal species, and very clear genetic distinction between a given species and all others.

"If a Martian landed on Earth and met a flock of pigeons and a crowd of humans, one would not seem more diverse than the other according to the basic measure of mitochondrial DNA," says Jesse Ausubel, Director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University, where the research was led by Senior Research Associate Mark Stoeckle and Research Associate David Thaler of the University of Basel, Switzerland.

The study results represent a surprise given predictions found in textbooks, and based on mathematical models of evolution,
 that the bigger the population of a species, the greater the genetic variation one expects to find. In fact, the mitochondrial
diversity within 7.6 billion humans or 500 million house sparrows or 100,000 sandpipers from around the world is about
 the same.The paper notes, however, that evolution is relentless, that species are always changing, and, therefore, the
degree of variation within a given species offers a clue into how long ago it emerged distinctly -- in other words,
 the older the species the greater the average genetic variation between its members
[Credit: The Rockefeller University]

"At a time when humans place so much emphasis on individual and group differences, maybe we should spend more time on the ways in which we resemble one another and the rest of the animal kingdom."

Says Dr. Stoeckle: "Culture, life experience and other things can make people very different but in terms of basic biology, we're like the birds."

"By determining the genetic variety within species of the animal kingdom, made possible only recently by the burgeoning number of DNA sequences, we've documented the absence of human exceptionalism."

Says. Dr. Thaler: "Our approach combines DNA barcodes, which are broad but not deep, from the entire animal kingdom with more detailed sequence information available for the entire mitochondrial genome of modern humans and a few other species. We analyzed DNA barcode sequences from thousands of modern humans in the same way as those from other animal species."

"One might have thought that, due to their high population numbers and wide geographic distribution, humans might have led to greater genetic diversity than other animal species," he adds. "At least for mitochondrial DNA, humans turn out to be low to average in genetic diversity."

"Experts have interpreted low genetic variation among living humans as a result of our recent expansion from a small population in which a sequence from one mother became the ancestor for all modern human mitochondrial sequences," says Dr. Thaler.

"Our paper strengthens the argument that the low variation in the mitochondrial DNA of modern humans also explains the similar low variation found in over 90% of living animal species - we all likely originated by similar processes and most animal species are likely young."

Genetic variation does not increase with population

The study results represent a surprise given predictions found in textbooks, and based on mathematical models of evolution, that the bigger the population of a species, the greater the genetic variation one expects to find.

"Is genetic diversity related to the size of the population?" asks Dr. Stoeckle. "The answer is no. The mitochondrial diversity within 7.6 billion humans or 500 million house sparrows or 100,000 sandpipers from around the world is about the same."

The paper notes, however, that evolution is relentless, that species are always changing, and, therefore, the degree of variation within a given species offers a clue into how long ago it emerged distinctly -- in other words, the older the species the greater the average genetic variation between its members.

Evolutionary bottlenecks: the fresh new beginning of a species

While asteroids and ice ages have played major roles in evolutionary history, scientists speculate that another great driver may have been the microbial world, notably viruses, which periodically cull populations, leaving behind only those able to survive the deadly challenge.

Genetically, 'the world is not a blurry place.' It is hard to find 'intermediates' -- the evolutionary stepping
stones between species. The intermediates disappear. The research is a new way to show that species
are 'islands in sequence space.' Each species has its own narrow, very specific consensus sequence,
just as our phone system has short, unique numeric codes to tell cities and countries apart
[Credit: The Rockefeller University]

"Life is fragile, susceptible to reductions in population from ice ages and other forms of environmental change, infections, predation, competition from other species and for limited resources, and interactions among these forces," says Dr. Thaler. Adds Dr. Thaler, "The similar sequence variation in many species suggests that all of animal life experiences pulses of growth and stasis or near extinction on similar time scales."

"Scholars have previously argued that 99% of all animal species that ever lived are now extinct. Our work suggests that most species of animals alive today are like humans, descendants of ancestors who emerged from small populations possibly with near-extinction events within the last few hundred thousand years."

'Islands in sequence space'

Another intriguing insight from the study, says Mr. Ausubel, is that "genetically, the world is not a blurry place. It is hard to find 'intermediates' - the evolutionary stepping stones between species. The intermediates disappear."

Dr. Thaler notes: "Darwin struggled to understand the absence of intermediates and his questions remain fruitful."

"The research is a new way to show that species are 'islands in sequence space.' Each species has its own narrow, very specific consensus sequence, just as our phone system has short, unique numeric codes to tell cities and countries apart."

Adds Dr. Thaler: "If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies. They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space."

The researchers say that with the bones or teeth of an ancient hominid, like those found in southern France or northern Spain, scientists might shed further light on the rate of evolution of the human species.

"It would be very exciting if over the next few years physical anthropologists and others were able to compare mitochondrial DNA from hominid species over the last 500,000 years," says Dr. Stoeckle.

Source: The Rockefeller University [May 21, 2018]

Genome structure of dinosaurs discovered by bird-turtle comparisons

A discovery by scientists at the University of Kent has provided significant insight into the overall genome structure of dinosaurs.

This is an Apalone spinifera spiny softshell turtle hatchling [Credit: Nicole Valenzuela]

By comparing the genomes of different species, chiefly birds and turtles, the Kent team were able to determine how the overall genome structure (i.e. the chromosomes) of many people's favourite dinosaur species - like Velociraptor or Tyrannosaurus - might have looked through a microscope.

The research was carried out in the laboratory of Professor Darren Griffin, of the University's School of Biosciences, and is now published in the journal Nature Communications. It involved extrapolating the likely genome structure of a shared common ancestor of birds and turtles that lived around 260 million years ago - 20 million years before the dinosaurs first emerged.

Dr Becky O'Connor, senior postdoctoral researcher and co-author of the paper, then traced how chromosomes changed over evolutionary time from a reptile ancestor to the present day.

The team found that, although the individual chromosomes rearranged their genes internally, this did not occur much at all between the chromosomes - what the scientists describe as 'a significant discovery'.

Birds (which are themselves living dinosaurs) have a lot of chromosomes compared to most other species and that is possibly one of the reasons why they are so diverse. This research suggests that the pattern of chromosomes (karyotype) seen in early emerging dinosaurs and later theropods is similar to that of most birds and, again, may help explain their great diversity.

The new discovery suggests that, had scientists had the opportunity to make a chromosome preparation from a theropod dinosaur, it might have looked very similar to that of a modern-day ostrich, duck or chicken.

One of the key pieces of biotechnology that made it possible was the development of a set of fluorescent probes derived from birds that worked well on the chromosomes of turtles.

Source: University of Kent [May 21, 2018]

Scientists analyze first ancient human DNA from Southeast Asia

The first whole-genome analyses of ancient human DNA from Southeast Asia reveal that there were at least three major waves of human migration into the region over the last 50,000 years.

Field workers excavate ancient human remains at Man Bac, Vietnam, in 2007. DNA from skeletons at this site
was included in the current study [Credit: Lorna Tilley, Australian National University]

The research, published in Science, complements what is known from archaeological, historical and linguistic studies of Southeast Asia, defined as the area east of India and south of China.

The work illuminates another critical portion of the story of ancient population dynamics around the world, joining numerous ancient-DNA studies of Europe as well as burgeoning research from the Near East, Central Asia, Pacific Islands and Africa.

"A very important part of the world is now accessible for ancient DNA analysis," said Mark Lipson, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of ancient-DNA specialist David Reich at Harvard Medical School and first author of the study. "It opens a window into the genetic origins of the people who lived there in the past and those who live there now."

An international team led by researchers at HMS and the University of Vienna extracted and analyzed DNA from the remains of 18 people who lived between about 4,100 and 1,700 years ago in what are now Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia.

The team found that the first migration took place about 45,000 years ago, bringing in people who became hunter-gatherers.

Then, during the Neolithic Period, around 4,500 years ago, there was a large-scale influx of people from China who introduced farming practices to Southeast Asia and mixed with the local hunter-gatherers.

People today with this ancestry mix tend to speak Austroasiatic languages, leading the researchers to propose that the farmers who came from the north were early Austroasiatic speakers.

"This study reveals a complex interplay between archaeology, genetics and language, which is critical for understanding the history of Southeast Asian populations," said co-senior author Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna.

The research revealed that subsequent waves of migration during the Bronze Age, again from China, arrived in Myanmar by about 3,000 years ago, in Vietnam by 2,000 years ago and in Thailand within the last 1,000 years. These movements introduced ancestry types that are today associated with speakers of different languages.

The identification of three ancestral populations -- hunter-gatherers, first farmers and Bronze Age migrants -- echoes a pattern first uncovered in ancient DNA studies of Europeans, but with at least one major difference: Much of the ancestral diversity in Europe has faded over time as populations mingled, while Southeast Asian populations have retained far more variation.

"People who are nearly direct descendants of each of the three source populations are still living in the region today, including people with significant hunter-gatherer ancestry who live in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and the Andaman Islands," said Reich, professor of genetics at HMS and co-senior author of the study. "Whereas in Europe, no one living today has more than a small fraction of ancestry from the European hunter-gatherers."

Reich hypothesizes that the high diversity of Southeast Asia today can be partly explained by the fact that farmers arrived much more recently than in Europe -- around 4,500 years ago compared with 8,000 years ago -- leaving less time for populations to mix and genetic variation to even out.

The new findings make it clear that the multiple waves of migration, each of which occurred during a key transition period of Southeast Asian history, shaped the genetics of the region to a remarkable extent.

"The major population turnover that came with the arrival of farmers is unsurprising, but the magnitudes of replacement during the Bronze Age are much higher than many people would have guessed," said Reich.

Also unexpected were the linguistic implications raised by analyses of the ancestry of people in western Indonesia.

"The evidence suggests that the first farmers of western Indonesia spoke Austroasiatic languages rather than the Austronesian languages spoken there today," Reich added. "Thus, Austronesian languages were probably later arrivals."

Additional samples from western Indonesia before and after 4,000 years ago should settle the question, Reich said.

Source: Harvard Medical School [May 17, 2018]

Does evolution make us or are we just drifting that way?

Evolution may be responsible for a range of complex traits, including height and waist-to-hip ratio, and diseases such as schizophrenia, research from The University of Queensland shows.

Credit: Shutterstock

The findings improve understanding of how natural selection shapes human populations, and could lead to better prevention, diagnosis and treatment of complex diseases through an enhanced knowledge of their underlying genetics.

The study, led by Professor Jian Yang from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience and Queensland Brain Institute, used more than 400,000 genetic samples from African, East Asian and European populations.

“Many human complex traits are concentrated in different populations around the world,” Professor Yang said.

“For example, populations in the Northern Hemisphere tend to get taller the further north you go, and European Americans have a lower body mass index (BMI) than African Americans, but higher than Chinese, Indonesians or Thais.

“Environmental factors currently play a role, but most complex traits have a genetic component.

“The question is whether or not these differences are the consequence of natural selection or simply the result of what we call ‘genetic drift’ – where gene mutations (also called genetic variants) become more or less frequent in a population by chance.”

Professor Yang and his colleagues set out to answer the question by testing to see if genetic variants were more differentiated across African, East Asian and European populations than expected under genetic drift.

They looked at a range of complex traits – including height, BMI, waist-to-hip ratio and cholesterol levels – and four common diseases – coronary artery disease, type II diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

If genetic variants associated with a complex trait resulted from natural selection they should appear more frequently than expected under genetic drift.

The analysis supported this, showing that the genetic variants associated with height, weight-to-hip ratio and schizophrenia were more differentiated than expected by random drift.

The genetic variants expected to affect height were higher in Europeans than Africans and East Asians and were consistent with observed differences between the populations.

“Our research was made possible by the availability of massive banks of genetic information that are being harnessed to shed new light on modifiable health risks that underlie common diseases.”

The methods developed in the study, published in Nature Communications, are general and applicable to other complex traits.

Source: University of Queensland [May 16, 2018]

What we inherited from our bug-eating ancestors

People who advocate adding insects to the human diet may be channeling their distant ancestors. Based on an analysis of the genomes of 107 different species of mammals, University of California, Berkeley, scientists conclude that our distant ancestors – the small, furry creatures that scurried around the feet of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago – were mostly insect eaters.

A spectral tarsier (Tarsius tarsier) feeding on a grasshopper in Tangkoko National Park, Northern Sulawesi, Indonesia
. Tarsiers have five chitinase genes to digest the high amount of chitin in their insectivorous diet, which likely
represents the ancestral condition of all placental animals, including humans
[Credit: Quentin Martinez]

The scientists inferred this because the genes for the enzymes that allowed these early ancestors of all mammals to digest insects are still hanging around in nearly all mammal genomes today. Even animals like tigers and seals that would never touch an insect have non-functional pieces of these genes sitting in their chromosomes, betraying their ancient ancestors’ diet.

“One of the coolest things is, if you look at humans, at Fido your dog, Whiskers your cat, your horse, your cow; pick any animal, generally speaking, they have remnants in their genomes of a time when mammals were small, probably insectivorous and running around when dinosaurs were still roaming Earth,” said postdoctoral fellow Christopher Emerling. “It is a signature in your genome that says, once upon a time you were not the dominant group of organisms on Earth. By looking at our genomes, we are looking at this ancestral past and a lifestyle that we don’t even live with anymore.”

The genetic evidence independently corroborates the conclusions paleontologists reached years ago based on the shapes of fossils and teeth from early mammals.

“In essence, we are looking at genomes and they are telling the same story as the fossils: that we think these animals were insectivorous and then dinosaurs went extinct. After the demise of these large carnivorous and herbivorous reptiles, mammals started changing their diets,” he said.

The finding could shed light on other roles played by these enzymes, called chitinases, which are found not only in the gut but the salivary glands, the pancreas and the lungs, where they may be involved in asthma.

Emerling and colleagues Michael Nachman, a professor of integrative biology and director of the UC Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and Frédéric Delsuc of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Université de Montpellier in France, report their findings in the journal Science Advances. Emerling currently is a PRESTIGE & Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow in Montpellier working on the ConvergeAnt project.

Breaking down insects’ exoskeletons

Many bacteria have genes that produce an enzyme that breaks down insects’ hard, outer shells, which are composed of a tough carbohydrate called chitin. It’s not surprising that humans and mice have a chitinase gene, since many humans today include insects in their diets, as do mice.

But humans actually have remnants of three other chitinase genes in their genome, though none of them are functional. Emerling showed that these gene remnants in humans aren’t unique to humans or primates, but instead can be traced to the ancestral placental mammals.

In all, he and his colleagues found five different chitinase enzyme genes by looking through the genomes of the largest group of mammals, those that have placentas that allow longer development in the womb, which excludes marsupials like opossums and egg-laying monotremes like the platypus. These placental mammals ranged from shrews and mice to elephants and whales.

Detailed artistic reconstruction of an ancestral placental mammal living during the Age of Dinosaurs 66 million
years ago, showing teeth adapted to capturing and eating insects [Credit: Carl Buell]

They found that the greater the percentage of insects in an animal’s diet, the more genes for chitinase it has.

“The only species that have five chitinases today are highly insectivorous, that is, 80 to 100 percent of their diet consists of insects. Since the earliest placental mammals likely had five chitinases, we think that this makes for a strong argument that they were highly insectivorous,” Emerling said.

As you would expect, ant and termite specialists such as aardvarks and certain armadillos have five functioning chitinase genes. But so do the insect-loving primates called tarsiers. They appear to be the only primates that have so many functional chitinase genes, Emerling said.

Dominated by dinosaurs

The story told by these chitinase genes is one of early mammals hunkering down eating insects while the big guys, the huge herbivorous dinosaurs like the brontosaurus and the big meat-eaters like T. rex gobbled up the most abundant food resources. Only 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period, when all non-bird dinosaurs died out, were mammals able to expand into other niches, which they quickly did. The first carnivorous and herbivorous mammals, as indicated by their teeth, arose within 10 million years of the dinosaurs’ demise.

Emerling, who compares genomes to see how mammals and humans evolved, was interested in what mammal genomes could tell us about that transition from insectivory to herbivory and carnivory since the last mass extinction.

He focuses primarily on weird animals that eat insects, including anteaters and armadillos, the unrelated aardvark and the distantly related pangolin. In exploring how these animals are able to digest insects, he decided to look at chitinases, whose roles in mammals are still poorly understood. It’s not known, for example, whether the enzymes allow animals to break down chitin into its component sugars and use them for energy, or if chitinases’ sole function is to break up the exoskeleton to allow access to the soft interiors of insects.

Using databases of animal genomes, plus newly sequenced genomes of armadillos and a lesser anteater (tamandua) obtained by colleagues at the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard, he searched for genes similar to the known chitinase gene and dredged up four new varieties.

Based on what is known about chitinase genes in bacteria and other animals, he was able to deduce which genes are functional and which are not, and draw conclusions about the tissues in which the genes are expressed and the enzyme active.

Among the surprises was that the insect-eating-specialist pangolin has only one functional chitinase gene, in contrast to the five in the aardvark and four in the lesser anteater. All eat ants and termites exclusively, but pangolins may have possibly evolved from carnivores that lost their chitinase genes shortly after taking over the ecological niche opened up when meat-eating dinosaurs died out.

Bison, gibbons and the dromedary camel have only one functional chitinase. Tigers, rhinos and polar bears have none.

Emerling has many other questions he thinks chitinases can answer about mammal evolution and physiology.

“This is suggesting that there are a lot of these enzymes that might be helping organisms digest their food. This goes from being a simple curiosity – humans have a chitinase, how cool! – to being something that can help us understand how different animals are adapted to their specialized diets.”

Source: University of California - Berkeley [May 16, 2018]

Worm-eating mice reveal how evolution works on islands

Australia has a bunch of kangaroo species, Madagascar has multiple species of lemurs, the Galapagos Islands have boulder-sized tortoises--islands get lots of cool animals. That's because when animals are isolated on islands, they can evolve into strange new species found nowhere else on Earth. But what's the cut-off--how small can an island be and still support the evolution of multiple new species from a single common ancestor? A team of mammalogists just discovered that four species of mice evolved from one common ancestor on Connecticut-sized Mindoro Island in the Philippines, making it the smallest known island where one kind of mammal has branched out into many more.

One of the worm-eating mouse species that earned its home island Mindoro a spot as the smallest known island
where one species has evolved into many more [Credit: L. R. Heaney, The Field Museum]

"The single most remarkable thing about planet Earth is there are so many species here, so much biodiversity. We take it for granted, but holy cow, there's a whole lot of stuff out there--how did it get here?" says Lawrence Heaney, Negaunee Curator of Mammals at Chicago's Field Museum and co-lead author of a recent paper in the Journal of Biogeography. "This is one of the few papers ever written to look at whether there's a limit to how small an island can be for species diversification to occur, and it's the only one looking at it in mammals. Mindoro is by far the smallest island on which we've seen this happen."

According to Heaney, this quest to find the smallest island that can support new mammals started with a thought experiment posed in 1980. Michael Soule, a conservation biologist, wondered if new animal species could diversify in an area the size of the largest of existing national parks. Diversification means that multiple species arise from one parent species. "There are many islands that have species that arrived from somewhere else and that subsequently changed into something distinctive. Many of these islands are much smaller than Mindoro," explains Heaney. "Rather, the key to this study is whether a single species that arrived from somewhere else has produced multiple species that all evolved within the given island from the single ancestral species. It is the issue of an increase in the number of species within the island, by evolution within the island."

Previously, the smallest island where scientists knew mammal species had diversified was Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines. But Luzon is one of the biggest islands in the world, about the size of Virginia. Heaney and his team wanted to see if they could do one better--"We looked at a map and said, okay, where's there a smaller island where diversification may have occurred?"

One of the worm-eating mice that showed that Mindoro is the smallest known island where one species
evolved into many [Credit: D. S. Balete, The Field Museum]

The scientists didn't have to look far--they turned to Mindoro, a small island just across a channel from Luzon. Mindoro is a tenth the size of Luzon--it's about two-thirds the size of Connecticut. Heaney's colleague Danny Balete, now deceased, led the fieldwork missions on Mindoro for four field seasons, searching for the island's mammals.

This is where the worm-eating mice come in.

"The mice we looked at in this study are all members of the "earthworm mouse" group Apomys--they love earthworms, but they also eat seeds and fruits. They've got big dark eyes, great big ears, long soft fur, white feet, dark tails--they're very pretty little mice," says Heaney.

When the team analyzed the DNA of Mindoro's earthworm mice, they found that the mice belonged to four separate species, three of which were new to science. And all four of the species, Heaney says, evolved on Mindoro from a common ancestor.

"The results are unambiguous--we've got four species of forest mice on Mindoro from one colonization event from Luzon about 2.8 million years ago," says Heaney. "And three of those four mouse species are found on their own separate mountains."

Scientists doing fieldwork that helped show Mindoro is the smallest known island where one species
has branched into many [Credit: L. R. Heaney, The Field Museum]

Chris Kyriazis, Heaney's former undergraduate student and co-first author on the paper, led the DNA analysis from the Field Museum's Pritzker DNA Lab. "By examining genetic variation across these populations, we were able to confirm not only that these mice originated from a single colonist on Mindoro, but also that they are distinctive enough to be considered different species. The fact that variation in external measurements show the same pattern only strengthens the case," says Kyriazis, who is now pursuing his PhD in biology at UCLA.

The fact that the four mouse species evolved on this little island means that there's a new answer to the question posed by Soule in 1980: mammals can diversify in an area as small as Mindoro. And since Mindoro is the same size as Yellowstone National Park, that means that new mammal species can evolve from one ancestor in areas as small as at least some large wildlife preserves.

The implications of Heaney and Kyriazis's discovery goes far beyond a thought experiment, though: it gives scientists a valuable tool for planning conservation spaces.

"This study changes how I think about conservation," says Heaney. "When we think about how to design protected areas, we need to think about the topography of the Earth, not just a flat map. The fact that these mice evolved on their own separate mountains within a limited geographic area tells us that mountains are important."

And figuring out how to plan protected wildlife spaces is crucial for preserving biodiversity. "As human population continues to expand, what's going to happen to everything else? How will new species be able to evolve?" asks Heaney. "This project is a step forward in being able to answer that."

Source: Field Museum [May 15, 2018]

Researchers uncover genomic info linking extinct giant ground sloth to modern species

Researchers have uncovered important genomic data from the remains of an ancient giant ground sloth, or Mylodon darwinii, the emblematic creature named after Charles Darwin, whose discovery of fossilized remains in South America is considered to be one of his significant scientific achievements.

The Mylodon cave in which the bone analyzed by researchers was collected
[Credit: Walter Ferry Dissmann]

Using a bone fragment which dates back nearly 13,000 years, scientists teased out and reconstructed DNA fragments to obtain a high-quality mitochondrial genome and nuclear genomic information. The analysis, they say, proves for the first time that the giant ground sloth--which went extinct approximately 10,000 years ago--is a close relative of the modern two-fingered sloth, believed to be one of the world's slowest mammals.

The research, published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests the two species diverged from one another approximately 22 million years ago. The much smaller, modern sloth evolved over time to inhabit trees, where it spends virtually its entire life suspended upside down.

"Our study confirms the convergent evolution of the two, tree dwelling modern sloths from two distinct lineages of extinct giant ground sloths," says Hendrik Poinar, a lead author of the study and director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre and principal investigator at the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research. "This means tree-living evolved independently, twice, which is remarkable."

Scientists say the sample was exceptionally well-preserved. It was taken from the famous Mylodon Cave in Chile, which derives its name from the numerous remains of ground sloths found inside. The constant cold and dry conditions of the cave have preserved a scientific treasure trove including bones, claws, feces and even large pieces of mummified skin still covered with blond fur.

"The incredible conservation of the bone sample we used in this study offers promising prospects for sequencing the full genome of this extinct species because of the high percentage of DNA that it contains," says Frédéric Delsuc, co-author of the paper and Director of Research at the Centre National de Recherche, France.

"This will certainly generate more insights and information into their unique features and ultimate extinction," he says.

These remains found within the exceptional site of Mylodon Cave, in Patagonia, Chile, were the first non-human samples used by scientists in early genetic tests which yielded genuine ancient DNA.

Advances in sequencing technology have led to a deeper understanding of ancient and extinct species, including the Columbian and woolly mammoths, giant lemurs and steppe bison.

Source: McMaster University [May 15, 2018]

Scientists crack how primordial life on Earth might have replicated itself

Scientists have created a new type of genetic replication system which demonstrates how the first life on Earth - in the form of RNA - could have replicated itself. The scientists from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology say the new RNA utilises a system of genetic replication unlike any known to naturally occur on Earth today.

Liquid brine containing replicating RNA molecules is concentrated in the cracks between ice crystals,
as seen with an electron microscope [Credit: Philipp Holliger, MRC LMB]

A popular theory for the earliest stages of life on Earth is that it was founded on strands of RNA, a chemical cousin of DNA. Like DNA, RNA strands can carry genetic information using a code of four molecular letters (bases), but RNA can be more than a simple 'string' of information. Some RNA strands can also fold up into three-dimensional shapes that can form enzymes, called ribozymes, and carry out chemical reactions.

If a ribozyme could replicate folded RNA, it might be able to copy itself and support a simple living system.

Previously, scientists had developed ribozymes that could replicate straight strands of RNA, but if the RNA was folded it blocked the ribozyme from copying it. Since ribozymes themselves are folded RNAs, their own replication is blocked.

Now, in a paper published in the journal eLife, the scientists have resolved this paradox by engineering the first ribozyme that is able to replicate folded RNAs, including itself.

Normally when copying RNA, an enzyme would add single bases (C, G, A or U) one at a time, but the new ribozyme uses three bases joined together, as a 'triplet' (e.g. GAU). These triplet building blocks enable the ribozyme to copy folded RNA, because the triplets bind to the RNA much more strongly and cause it to unravel - so the new ribozyme can copy its own folded RNA strands.

The scientists say that the 'primordial soup' could have contained a mixture of bases in many lengths - one, two, three, four or more bases joined together - but they found that using strings of bases longer than a triplet made copying the RNA less accurate.

Dr Philipp Holliger, from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and senior author on the paper, said: "We found a solution to the RNA replication paradox by re-thinking how to approach the problem - we stopped trying to mimic existing biology and designed a completely new synthetic strategy. It is exciting that our RNA can now synthesise itself.

"These triplets of bases seem to represent a sweet spot, where we get a nice opening up of the folded RNA structures, but accuracy is still high. Notably, although triplets are not used in present-day biology for replication, protein synthesis by the ribosome - an ancient RNA machine thought to be a relic of early RNA-based life - proceeds using a triplet code.

"However, this is only a first step because our ribozyme still needs a lot of help from us to do replication. We provided a pure system, so the next step is to integrate this into the more complex substrate mixtures mimicking the primordial soup - this likely was a diverse chemical environment also containing a range of simple peptides and lipids that could have interacted with the RNA."

The experiments were conducted in ice at -7°C, because the researchers had previously discovered that freezing concentrates the RNA molecules in a liquid brine in tiny gaps between the ice crystals. This also is beneficial for the RNA enzymes, which are more stable and function better at cold temperatures.

Dr Holliger added: "This is completely new synthetic biology and there are many aspects of the system that we have not yet explored. We hope in future, it will also have some biotechnology applications, such as adding chemical modifications at specific positions to RNA polymers to study RNA epigenetics or augment the function of RNA."

Dr Nathan Richardson, Head of Molecular and Cellular Medicine at the MRC, said: "This is a really exciting example of blue skies research that has revealed important insights into how the very beginnings of life may have emerged from the 'primordial soup' some 3.7 billion years ago. Not only is this fascinating science, but understanding the minimal requirements for RNA replication and how these systems can be manipulated could offer exciting new strategies for treating human disease."

Source: Medical Research Council [May 15, 2018]

New tool predicts eye, hair and skin color from a DNA sample of an unidentified individual

An international team, led by scientists from the School of Science at IUPUI and Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands, has developed a novel tool to accurately predict eye, hair and skin color from human biological material - even a small DNA sample - left, for example, at a crime scene or obtained from archaeological remains. This all-in-one pigmentation profile tool provides a physical description of the person in a way that has not previously been possible by generating all three pigment traits together using a freely available webtool.

An international team, led by scientists from the School of Science at IUPUI and Erasmus MC University Medical Center
 Rotterdam, has developed a novel tool to accurately predict eye, hair and skin color from human biological material.
The innovative high-probability and high-accuracy complete pigmentation profile webtool
is available online without charge [Credit: Walsh lab in School of Science at IUPUI]

The tool is designed to be used when standard forensic DNA profiling is not helpful because no reference DNA exists against which to compare the evidence sample.

The HIrisPlex-S DNA test system is capable of simultaneously predicting eye, hair and skin color phenotypes from DNA. Users, such as law enforcement officials or anthropologists, can enter relevant data using a laboratory DNA analysis tool, and the webtool will predict the pigment profile of the DNA donor.

"We have previously provided law enforcement and anthropologists with DNA tools for eye color and for combined eye and hair color, but skin color has been more difficult," said forensic geneticist Susan Walsh from IUPUI, who co-directed the study. "Importantly, we are directly predicting actual skin color divided into five subtypes - very pale, pale, intermediate, dark and dark to black - using DNA markers from the genes that determine an individual's skin coloration. This is not the same as identifying genetic ancestry. You might say it's more similar to specifying a paint color in a hardware store rather than denoting race or ethnicity.

"If anyone asks an eyewitness what they saw, the majority of time they mention hair color and skin color. What we are doing is using genetics to take an objective look at what they saw," Walsh said.

The innovative high-probability and high-accuracy complete pigmentation profile webtool is available online without charge.

The study, "HIrisPlex-S System for Eye, Hair and Skin Colour Prediction from DNA: Introduction and Forensic Developmental Validation," is published in the peer-reviewed journal Forensic Science International: Genetics.

"With our new HIrisPlex-S system, for the first time, forensic geneticists and genetic anthropologists are able to simultaneously generate eye, hair and skin color information from a DNA sample, including DNA of the low quality and quantity often found in forensic casework and anthropological studies," said Manfred Kayser of Erasmus MC, co-leader of the study.

Source: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis School of Science [May 14, 2018]