Seahorses and pipefishes are notable for being the only species in which males become “pregnant”.
Seahorses are a genus (Hippocampus) of fish belonging to the family Syngnathidae, which also includes pipefish and leafy sea dragons. There are over 32 species of seahorse, mainly found in shallow tropical and temperate waters throughout the world.

Seahorses are unique in appearance, resembling an amalgamation of body parts taken from numerous animals: a horse-like head, a monkey-like prehensile tail, chameleon-like eyes and insect-like body armour, but they are, however a peculiar species of fish equipped with …

There has been a long history of innovation and development of tools for gene discovery and genetic analysis in Drosophila melanogaster. This includes methods to induce mutations and to screen for those mutations that disrupt specific processes, methods to map mutations genetically and physically, and methods to clone and characterize genes at the molecular level.Modern genetics also requires techniques to do the reverse — to disrupt the functions of specific genes, the sequences of which are already known. This is the process referred to as reverse genetics.

–Melissa D. …

The reason for Drosophila melanogaster being a very successful model system when compared to other equally beautiful model organisms in the field will be its short life cycle,cheap to maintain in lab,availability of BALANCERS CHROMOSOME’S ,many offspring’s,feature-rich morphology(various genetic markers) and not to forget wide array of genetic tools.The last feature tilts the balance slightly in favor of Drosophila over its other counterparts in the field.
One could do to loss of function studies using various ways (P-element mutagenesis,EMS,UAS RNAi and deletions encompassing the entire genome) and generating somatic clones and …

At first, the embryo is just a small mass of cells. As it develops, it has to ‘know’ where its top and bottom are, as well as its front and back, and left and right sides. Different cells of the embryo grow into their designated organs and body parts. All must grow in the right place, and to the right size. Surprisingly, many of the genes that control the early embryo development of organisms such as mice, chickens and fruit flies are very similar to Human’s.
An animal’s body results …

The enormous diversity in body plan among the various organisms in animal kingdom is partly contributed by the Hox genes.Hox proteins regulate gene expression in different ways and thereby generating different body plans.Most of the organisms on earth have one or more clusters of Hox genes.These Hox genes pattern different segment and thus gives a unique identity by altering their expression patterns,their targets and their functional domains.
As you know hox genes dont act alone,mostly they function with other co factors.But the problem here is same co factor or factors are …

In some of the previous posts on Hoxful monsters we talked about Hox genes ,about their properties ,importance in anterior posterior patterning axis in Drosophila and we also seen how these Hox genes come into picture during early embryogenesis.Today we will briefly overview into one of fundamental question in the field of biology “How do Hox Proteins or transcription factors in general attain specificity invivo.
Hox genes codes for transcription factors which controls a development fate by regulating a cascade of downstream target genes.Hox proteins bind to DNA as monomer through …

In my post few days back we have looked into the biological classification of animals based on 18s RNA study and in this one we see what changes are in store when you do phylogenomics analysis.Modern evolutionary biology has come a long way from Linnaeus days to molecular phylogenetics (Field et al 1988 )(In this method: rRNA is the most conserved (least variable) gene in all cells For this reason, genes that encode the rRNA (rDNA) are sequenced to identify an organism’s taxonomic group, calculate related groups, and estimate …