Natural selection operating within genomes will inevitably result in the appearance of DNAs with no phenotypic expression whose only ‘function’ is survival within genomes. Prokaryotic transposable elements and eukaryotic middle-repetitive sequences can be seen as such DNAs, and thus no phenotypic or evolutionary function need be assigned to them.

Selfish genes, the phenotype paradigm and genome evolution.

All animal embryos pass through a stage during which developmental control is handed from maternally provided gene products to those synthesized from the zygotic genome. This maternal-to-zygotic transition (MZT) has been extensively studied in model organisms, including echinoderms, nematodes, insects, fish, amphibians and mammals. In all cases, the MZT can be subdivided into two interrelated processes: first, a subset of maternal mRNAs and proteins is eliminated; second, zygotic transcription is initiated. The timing and scale of these two events differ across species, as do the cellular and morphogenetic processes that sculpt their embryos. In this article, we discuss conserved and distinct features within the two component processes of the MZT.

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The maternal-to-zygotic transition: a play in two acts

A single learning event initiates several memory processes with different time courses of retention. While short term memory involves covalent modification of pre-existing proteins, the finding that long-term memory requires the expression, during learning, of additional genes, makes it possible to analyse in molecular terms the induction and retention of long-term memory.

The long and the short of long–term memory—a molecular framework

http://cs.utsa.edu/%7Ejruan/teaching/cs5263_fall_2007/papers/information_content_stormo.pdf

Information content of binding sites on nucleotide sequences

Preferential codon usage in prokaryotic genes: the optimal codon-anticodon interaction energy and the selective codon usage in efficiently expressed genes.

Robert F. Goldberger

Papers

Biological Regulation and Development

Biological Regulation and Development: Molecular Organization and Cell Function