Poropuntius huangchuchieni is a medium-sized freshwater fish species, belonging to the Poropuntius genus, which has a broad geographic distribution spanning from southwestern China to Myanmar, Thailand, the Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra (Kottelat, 2013) with the Mekong River System being the most likely center of diversity for the genus.In China, the genus is naturally distributed in the Yunnan Plateau, the southeastern neighbor of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, which consistently responded to the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau's (QTP) uplifting during the Pliocene epoch, resulting in a dramatic change in the region's climate (Cheng et al., 2001;Ming & Shi, 2006). Consequently, the aquatic species in these regions may have experienced a driving force for diversification and speciation in evolutionary history, and
Spongicoloides zhoui sp. nov. (Crustacea: Decapoda: Spongicolidae), a species of deep-sea hexactinellid sponge-associated shrimp, is described based on specimens collected from the Zhenbei Seamount in the South China Sea. The new species is morphologically most similar to the Western Pacific congeneric species Spongicoloides iheyaensis Saito, Tsuchida & Yamamoto, 2006 in that the ischium of the third pereiopod is unarmed and the fixed finger of the third pereiopod is armed with small teeth on the distoventral margin. However, S. zhoui sp. nov. can be distinguished from S. iheyaensis in that its female antennal basicerite has three large spines on the distolateral margin. Molecular analyses based on nuclear histone H3, and mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI), 12S ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and 16S rRNA gene fragments confirmed the placement of S. zhoui sp. nov. within a clade of Spongicoloides/Spongiocaris species, and their sequence divergences were large enough to justify the recognition of this new species.
Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is an important food and feed crop which rich in mineral sources. The WUSCHEL-related homeobox (WOX) gene family plays important roles in plant development and identification of putative gene families, their structure, and potential functions is a primary step for not only understanding the genetic mechanisms behind various biological process but also for genetic improvement. A variety of computational tools, including MAFFT, HMMER, hidden Markov models, Pfam, SMART, MEGA, ProtTest, BLASTn, and BRAD, among others, were used. We identified 34 MsWOX genes based on a systematic analysis of the alfalfa plant genome spread in eight chromosomes. This is an expansion of the gene family which we attribute to observed chromosomal duplications. Sequence alignment analysis revealed 61 conserved proteins containing a homeodomain. Phylogenetic study sung reveal five evolutionary clades with 15 motif distributions. Gene structure analysis reveals various exon, intron, and untranslated structures which are consistent in genes from similar clades. Functional analysis prediction of promoter regions reveals various transcription binding sites containing key growth, development, and stress-responsive transcription factor families such as MYB, ERF, AP2, and NAC which are spread across the genes. Most of the genes are predicted to be in the nucleus. Also, there are duplication events in some genes which explain the expansion of the family. The present research provides a clue on the potential roles of MsWOX family genes that will be useful for further understanding their functional roles in alfalfa plants.
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