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American Genetic Association
The American Genetic Association (AGA) is a US-based professional scientific organization dedicated to the study of genetics and genomics which was founded as the American Breeders Association in 1903. The association has published the '' Journal of Heredity'' since 1914, which disseminates peer-reviewed organismal research in areas of general interest to the genetics and genomics community. Recent articles have focused on conservation genetics of endangered species and biodiversity discovery, phylogenomics, molecular adaptation and speciation, and genotype to phenotype associations. History The American Breeders Association held its first meeting in 1903 to discuss the "new" science of genetics that arose from Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel's discoveries of the laws of inheritance. The organization was established "to study the laws of breeding and to promote the improvement of plants and animals by the development of expert methods of breeding." In 191 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclave of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelago of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States asserts sovereignty over five Territories of the United States, major island territories and United States Minor Outlying Islands, various uninhabited islands in Oceania and the Caribbean. It is a megadiverse country, with the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, third-largest land area and List of countries and dependencies by population, third-largest population, exceeding 340 million. Its three Metropolitan statistical areas by population, largest metropolitan areas are New York metropolitan area, New York, Greater Los Angeles, Los Angel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phylogeography
Phylogeography is the study of the historical processes that may be responsible for the past to present geographic distributions of genealogical lineages. This is accomplished by considering the geographic distribution of individuals in light of genetics, particularly population genetics. This term was introduced to describe geographically structured genetic signals within and among species. An explicit focus on a species' biogeography/biogeographical past sets phylogeography apart from classical population genetics and phylogenetics. Past events that can be inferred include population expansion, population bottlenecks, vicariance, dispersal, and human migration, migration. Recently developed approaches integrating coalescent theory or the genealogical history of alleles and distributional information can more accurately address the relative roles of these different historical forces in shaping current patterns. Historical development The term phylogeography was first used by Joh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genetics Societies
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar working in the 19th century in Brno, was the first to study genetics scientifically. Mendel studied "trait inheritance", patterns in the way traits are handed down from parents to offspring over time. He observed that organisms (pea plants) inherit traits by way of discrete "units of inheritance". This term, still used today, is a somewhat ambiguous definition of what is referred to as a gene. Trait inheritance and molecular inheritance mechanisms of genes are still primary principles of genetics in the 21st century, but modern genetics has expanded to study the function and behavior of genes. Gene structure and function, variation, and distribution are studied within the context of the cell, the organism (e.g. dominance), and within the conte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolutionary Biology
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biology emerged through what Julian Huxley called the Modern synthesis (20th century), modern synthesis of understanding, from previously unrelated fields of biological research, such as genetics and ecology, systematics, and paleontology. The investigational range of current research has widened to encompass the genetic architecture of adaptation, molecular evolution, and the different forces that contribute to evolution, such as sexual selection, genetic drift, and biogeography. The newer field of evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo") investigates how embryogenesis is controlled, thus yielding a wider synthesis that integrates developmental biology with the fields of study covered by the earlier evolutionary synthesis. Subfields ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Population Genetics
Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and among populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as Adaptation (biology), adaptation, speciation, and population stratification, population structure. Population genetics was a vital ingredient in the emergence of the Modern synthesis (20th century), modern evolutionary synthesis. Its primary founders were Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane and Ronald Fisher, who also laid the foundations for the related discipline of quantitative genetics. Traditionally a highly mathematical discipline, modern population genetics encompasses theoretical, laboratory, and field work. Population genetic models are used both for statistical inference from DNA sequence data and for proof/disproof of concept. What sets population genetics apart from newer, more phenotypic approaches to modelling evolution, such as evolutionary game theory and evolu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conservation Genetics
Conservation genetics is an interdisciplinary subfield of population genetics that aims to understand the dynamics of genes in a population for the purpose of natural resource management, conservation of genetic diversity, and the prevention of species extinction. Scientists involved in conservation genetics come from a variety of fields including population genetics, research in natural resource management, molecular ecology, molecular biology, evolutionary biology, and systematics. The genetic diversity within species is one of the three fundamental components of biodiversity (along with species diversity and ecosystem diversity), so it is an important consideration in the wider field of conservation biology. Genetic diversity Genetic diversity is the total amount of genetic variability within a species. It can be measured in several ways, including: observed heterozygosity, expected heterozygosity, the mean number of alleles per locus, the percentage of loci that are po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelmine Key
Wilhelmine "Minnie" Marie Enteman Key (February 22, 1872 – January 31, 1955) was an American geneticist. She was the first woman to gain a PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago, where she studied coloration in paper wasps. She contributed to the study of eugenics and was an influential teacher to Sewall Wright. Early life and education Key was born in Hartford, Wisconsin, in 1872. She was the fourth child of Katherine E. Noller and Charles John Enteman. In her childhood she studied wasps. At the age of 16 she enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While there, she assisted Edward Asahel Birge in his study of Lake Mendota. In her sophomore year she became the class second vice-president. Later in her college career, she joined the honor society Phi Beta Kappa. She obtained her AB from the University of Wisconsin. She attended the University of Chicago supported by a fellowship. As an adult, she retained her childhood interest in studying wasps, and eve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Domestication
Domestication is a multi-generational Mutualism (biology), mutualistic relationship in which an animal species, such as humans or leafcutter ants, takes over control and care of another species, such as sheep or fungi, to obtain from them a steady supply of resources, such as meat, milk, or labor. The process is gradual and geographically diffuse, based on trial and error. Domestication affected genes for behavior in animals, making them less aggressive. In plants, domestication affected genes for morphology, such as increasing seed size and stopping the Shattering (agriculture), shattering of cereal seedheads. Such changes both make domesticated organisms easier to handle and reduce their ability to survive in the wild. The first Domestication of animals, animal to be domesticated by humans was the domestication of the dog, dog, as a Commensalism, commensal, at least 15,000 years ago. Other animals, including goats, sheep, and cows, were domesticated around 11,000 years ago. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phylogenetics
In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical data and observed heritable traits of DNA sequences, protein amino acid sequences, and morphology. The results are a phylogenetic tree—a diagram depicting the hypothetical relationships among the organisms, reflecting their inferred evolutionary history. The tips of a phylogenetic tree represent the observed entities, which can be living taxa or fossils. A phylogenetic diagram can be rooted or unrooted. A rooted tree diagram indicates the hypothetical common ancestor of the taxa represented on the tree. An unrooted tree diagram (a network) makes no assumption about directionality of character state transformation, and does not show the origin or "root" of the taxa in question. In addition to their use for inferring phylogenetic pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel Order of Saint Augustine, OSA (; ; ; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was an Austrian Empire, Austrian biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinians, Augustinian friar and abbot of St Thomas's Abbey, Brno, St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno (Brünn), Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a Sudeten Germans, German-speaking family in the Austrian Silesia, Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today's Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable trait (biological), traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of biological inheritance, heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. Mendel worked with seven characteristics of Pea, pea plants: plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
