Ron P. Dirks

TL;DR: It is shown that regulatory components of the venom secretory system may have evolved from a pancreatic origin and that venom toxin genes were co-opted by distinct genomic mechanisms, which provides insight into mechanisms of protein evolution under strong selection.

TL;DR: Combined data provide a functional link between HDACs and DNAJs in suppressing cytotoxic protein aggregation and DNAJB8 is (de)acetylated at two conserved C-terminal lysines that are not involved in substrate binding, but do play a role in suppressing protein aggregation.

TL;DR: It is shown that unlike any other teleost fish, the eel retains fully populated, duplicate Hox clusters, which originated at the teleost-specific genome duplication, and all copies are expressed in early embryos.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used the zebrafish Mycobacterium marinum infection model to study the progression of tuberculosis in early embryos and visual flow screening of late-stage larvae.

TL;DR: The conservation of the regulatory hierarchy controlling βγ-crystallin expression between organisms with and without a lens shows that the evolutionary origin of the lens was based on co-option of pre-existing regulatory circuits controlling the expression of a key structural gene in a primitive light-sensing system.