Biological applications of computers are vastly increasing as computer technology rapidly improves. One such application is the visualization of the three-dimensional structure of certain proteins. There is a direct correlation

deep metazoan phylogeny. All groupings that were obtained with more than 80 % bootstrap support are consistent with currently supported phylogenetic hypotheses. This includes monophyletic Chordata, Vertebrata, Nematoda, Platyhelminthes and Trochozoa. Several other clades such as Deuteros

from several metazoan groups, we report many other extraordinary sequences ranging between ca. 1350 bp (in symphylan myriapods) to ca. 3300 bp (in some strepsipteran insects). Myriapods are particularly interesting, having inde-pendently evolved extraordinary sequences in the four classes (Chilopoda

SYNOPSIS. In comparative studies using model organisms, extant taxa are often referred to as basal. The term suggests that such taxa are descendants of lineages that diverged early in the history of some larger taxon. By this usage, the basal metazoans comprise just four phyla (Placozoa, Porifera

. Reassessment of the evidence, however, suggests that this pre-Ediacaran history was neither deep nor was represented by analogues of microscopic living metazoans. The origination of this Kingdom may have been no earlier than ca. 650 Myr, and the earliest forms emerged from the Metazoa-Fungi-Mycetozoa stem-group

Polycomb group proteins are essential for early development in metazoans, but their contributions to human development are not well understood. We have mapped the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) subunit SUZ12 across the entire nonrepeat portion of the genome in human embryonic stem (ES) cells

groups, their evolutionary relationship was difficult to decide. Through ancestral state inference, we found that microbial rhodopsins and metazoan rhodopsins are divergently related in their seven-transmembrane domains. Our result proposes that they are homologous proteins and metazoan rhodopsins

SUMMARY A phylogenetic framework is essential for understanding the origin and evolution of metazoan development. Despite a number of recent molecular studies and a rich fossil record of sponges and cnidarians, the evolutionary relationships of the early branching metazoan groups to each other

We performed food web manipulation experiments in three eutrophic Daphnia-dominated ponds, to compare the predation impact on planktonic bacteria exerted by metazoan and protozoan bacterial consumers. We analyzed the bacterial morphological composition by image analysis and the taxonomic

and anaerobic conditions. In the detritus layers which cover clayey and muddy sediments ciliates are few in number and play a small role compared with metazoan groups, such as nematodes, which may sometimes be as numerous as ciliates. A comparison with the enumeration of the benthic metazoans in Niva Bay