Vanderbilt University

About: Vanderbilt University is a education organization based out in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Cancer. The organization has 45066 authors who have published 106528 publications receiving 5435039 citations. The organization is also known as: Vandy.

The genome of the choanoflagellate Monosiga brevicollis and the origin of metazoans.

Abstract: Choanoflagellates are the closest known relatives of metazoans. To discover potential molecular mechanisms underlying the evolution of metazoan multicellularity, we sequenced and analysed the genome of the unicellular choanoflagellate Monosiga brevicollis. The genome contains approximately 9,200 intron-rich genes, including a number that encode cell adhesion and signalling protein domains that are otherwise restricted to metazoans. Here we show that the physical linkages among protein domains often differ between M. brevicollis and metazoans, suggesting that abundant domain shuffling followed the separation of the choanoflagellate and metazoan lineages. The completion of the M. brevicollis genome allows us to reconstruct with increasing resolution the genomic changes that accompanied the origin of metazoans.

Large-scale genotyping identifies 41 new loci associated with breast cancer risk

Abstract: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women Common variants at 27 loci have been identified as associated with susceptibility to breast cancer, and these account for ∼9% of the familial risk of the disease We report here a meta-analysis of 9 genome-wide association studies, including 10,052 breast cancer cases and 12,575 controls of European ancestry, from which we selected 29,807 SNPs for further genotyping These SNPs were genotyped in 45,290 cases and 41,880 controls of European ancestry from 41 studies in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC) The SNPs were genotyped as part of a collaborative genotyping experiment involving four consortia (Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study, COGS) and used a custom Illumina iSelect genotyping array, iCOGS, comprising more than 200,000 SNPs We identified SNPs at 41 new breast cancer susceptibility loci at genome-wide significance (P < 5 × 10(-8)) Further analyses suggest that more than 1,000 additional loci are involved in breast cancer susceptibility

Hot and cold granites? Implications of zircon saturation temperatures and preservation of inheritance

Abstract: Zircon saturation temperatures ( T Zr) calculated from bulk-rock compositions provide minimum estimates of temperature if the magma was undersaturated, but maxima if it was saturated. For plutons with abundant inherited zircon, T Zr provides a useful estimate of initial magma temperature at the source, an important parameter that is otherwise inaccessible. Among 54 investigated plutons, there is a clear distinction between T Zr for inheritance-rich (mean 766 °C) and inheritance-poor (mean 837 °C) granitoids. The latter were probably undersaturated in zircon at the source, and hence the calculated T Zr is likely to be an underestimate of their initial temperature. These data suggest fundamentally different mechanisms of magma generation, transport, and emplacement. “Hot” felsic magmas with minimal inheritance probably require advective heat input into the crust, are crystal poor, and readily erupt, whereas “cold,” inheritance-rich magmas require fluid influx, are richer in crystals, and are unlikely to erupt.

A theoretical framework for intraguild predation

Abstract: Many important issues in community ecology revolve around the interplay of competition and predation Species that compete may also be locked in predator-prey interactions, a mixture of competition and predation known as "intraguild predation" (IGP) There is growing evidence for the importance of IGP in many natural communities, yet little formal ecological theory addresses this particular blend of interactions In this article, we explore the consequences of incorporating IGP into standard models of exploitative competition and food chains (a general resource-consumer model, a Lotka-Volterra food chain model, and Schoener's exploitative competition model) Our theoretical analyses suggest a general criterion for coexistence in IGP systems: the intermediate species (the prey in intraguild predation) should be superior at exploitative competition for the shared resource, whereas the top species (the predator) should gain significantly from its consumption of the intermediate species Along gradients in en