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THE JOSEPHINE BAY PAUL CENTER IN COMPARATIVE MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION was officially established at the Marine Biological Laboratory in January of 1997. It is made possible by a generous endowment from the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation which has had a philanthropic interest in the MBL for the past twenty years. Read more...

RESEARCH at the Center explores the evolution and interaction of genomes of diverse organisms that play significant roles in environmental biology and human health. Projects span all evolutionary time scales, from deep phylogenetic divergence of ancestral prokaryotic and eukaryotic lineages to ecological analyses of how members of diverse communities contribute and respond to environmental change. The Center also houses the Mobile Genetic Element Cluster, which includes MBL-affiliated year-round and summer investigators who are studying mobile DNA.

The Center is part of the Brown University - Marine Biological Laboratory Graduate Program in Biological and Environmental Sciences. Most faculty are currently accepting students.

Recent Publications:

Koushirou Suga, David B. Mark Welch, Yukari Tanaka, Yoshitaka Sakakura, and Atsushi Hagiwara, 2008. Two Circular Chromosomes of Unequal Copy Number Make Up the Mitochondrial Genome of the Rotifer Brachionus plicatilis. Molecular Biology and Evolution 2008 25: 1129-1137; doi:10.1093/molbev/msn058.

Manda Clair Jost, David M. Hillis, Ying Lu, John W. Kyle, Harry A. Fozzard, and Harold H. Zakon, 2008. Toxin-Resistant Sodium Channels: Parallel Adaptive Evolution across a Complete Gene Family Molecular Biology and Evolution 2008 25: 1016-1024; doi:10.1093/molbev/msn025.

Riley M., Staley J.T., Danchin A., Wang T., Brettin T.S., Hauser L.J., Land M.L., Thompson L.S. Genomics of an extreme psychrophile, Psychromonas ingrahamii. BMC Genomics. 2008 May 6;9(1):210 PMID: 18460197.

Alliegro, M., Alliegro, M. A., 2008. Centrosomal RNA correlates with intron-poor nuclear genes in Spisula oocytes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 10.1073/pnas.0802293105.

Rull, K., Hallast, P., Uuskula, L., Jackson, J., Punab, M., Salumets, A., Campbell, R.K., and Laan, M. Fine scale quantification of hCG beta gene transcription in human trophoblastic and non-malignant non-trophoblastic tissues. Mol. Human Reprod. 14:23-31. (2008) E-published November 29, 2007.

McKenna, S.D., Feger, G., Kelton, C., Yang, M., Ardissone, V., Cirillo, R., Vitte, P.A., Jiang, X., and Campbell, R.K. Tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-soluble high-affinity receptor complex as a TNF antagonist. J. Pharmacol Exp. Ther. 322:822-828. (2007)

Mark Welch, D., Mark Welch, J., Meselson, M., 2008. Evidence for degenerate tetraploidy in bdelloid rotifers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 10.1073/pnas.0800972105.

Gladyshev, E., Meselson, M., 2008. Extreme resistance of bdelloid rotifers to ionizing radiation Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 10.1073/pnas.0800966105

Huse, S. M., J. A. Huber, Morrison, H. G., Sogin, M.L., Mark Welch, D. (2007). Accuracy and quality of massively-parallel DNA pyrosequencing. Genome Biology 8: R143.

Corradi, N., Akiyoshi, D.E., Morrison, H.G., Feng, X., Weiss, L.M., Tzipori,S., Keeling, P.J. 2007. Patterns of Genome Evolution among the Microsporidian Parasites Encephalitozoon cuniculi, Antonospora locustae and Enterocytozoon bieneusi. PLoS ONE 2(12): e1277. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001277

Sinigalliano, C.D., Gidley, M.L., Shibata, T., Whitman, D., Dixon, T.H., Laws, E., Hou, A., Bachoon, D., Brand, L., Amaral-Zettler, L., Gast, R., Steward, G. F., Nigro, O. D., Fujioka, R., Betancourt,W.Q., Vithanage, G., Mathews, J., Fleming, L.E., Solo-Gabriele, H. M. 2007. Impacts of Hurricane Katrina on the Microbial Landscape of the New Orleans Area. PNAS. 104 (21): 9029-9034 doi:10.1073/pnas.0610552104

Aguilera, A., Zettler, E., Gomez. F., Amaral-Zettler, L., Rodriguez, N. and R. Amils. Distribution and seasonal variability in the benthic eukaryotic community of Rio Tinto (SW, Spain), an acidic, high metal extreme environment. Systematic and Applied Microbiology 30 (2007) 531-546.

Ekanayake, D.K., D.B. Mark Welch, R. Kieft, S. Hajduk, and W.P.J. Dittus. 2007. Transmission dynamics of Cryptosporidium infection in a natural population of non-human primates at Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka. Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg. 77 (5): 818-822.

Gribble, K.E., G. Nolan, and D.M. Anderson. 2007. Biodiversity, biogeography and potential trophic impact of Protoperidinium spp. (Dinophyceae) of the southwestern coast of Ireland. Journal of Plankton Research 29 (11): 931-947.

Bordenstein, S.R. 2007. Evolutionary genomics: Transdomain gene transfers. Current Biology 17:R935.

Bordenstein, S.R. 2007. Discover the microbes within: The Wolbachia project. Focus on Microbiology Education 14:1, Special Issue on K-12 Education.

Meselson, M. and D.B. Mark Welch. 2007. Stable heterozygosity? Science 318: 202-203.

Huber, J.A., D.B. Mark Welch, H.G. Morrison, S.M. Huse, P.R. Neal, D.A. Butterfield, and M.L. Sogin. 2007. Microbial population structures in the deep marine biosphere. Science 318: 97-100.

Morrison, H.G., A.G. McArthur, F.D. Gillin, S.B. Aley, R.D. Adam, G.J. Olsen, A.A. Best, Z. Cande, F. Chen, M.J. Cipriano, B.J. Davids, S.C. Dawson, H.G. Elmendorf, A.B. Hehl, M.E. Holder, S.M. Huse, U.U. Kim, E. Lasek-Nesselquist, G. Manning, A. Nigam, J.E. Nixon, D. Palm, N.E. Passamaneck, A. Prabhu, C.I. Reich, D.S. Reiner, J. Samuelson, S. G.Svard, M.L.Sogin. 2007. Genomic Minimalism in the Early Diverging Intestinal Parasite Giardia lamblia. Science 317:1921-1926.

Wells, L.E, Armstrong, J.A. and J.A. Huber. 2007. Disciplinary aspirations and educational opportunities. In W.T. Sullivan III and J.A. Baross (eds.), 547-557. Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Baross, J.A., Schrenk, M.O, and J.A. Huber. 2007. Limits of Carbon Life on Earth and Elsewhere. In W.T. Sullivan III and J.A. Baross (eds.), 275-291. Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Bordenstein, S.R. and J.H. Werren. 2007. Bidirectional incompatibility among divergent Wolbachia and incompatibility level differences among closely related Wolbachia in Nasonia. Heredity 99: 278-287.

Panagiotis I., J. C. D. Hotopp, P. Sapountzis, S. Siozios, G. Tsiamis, S. R. Bordenstein, L. Baldo, J. H. Werren and K. Bourtzis. 2007. On the origin of DNA replication of Wolbachia and closely related bacteria. BMC Genomics 8:182

Suga K, D. Mark Welch , Y. Tanaka, Y. Sakakura, and A. Hagiwara. 2007. Analysis of expressed sequence tags of the cyclically parthenogenetic rotifer Brachionus plicatilis. PLoS ONE 2(8): e671.

Huse, M.S., J.A. Huber, H.G. Morrison, M.L. Sogin and D. Mark Welch. 2007. Accuracy and quality of massively-parallel DNA pyrosequencing. Genome Biology 8: R143.

Hobbie, J.E., M. Bahr and A.-L. Reysenbach. 2007. "Ecology at long-Term Research Sites: Integrating Microbes and Ecosystems" in Manual of Environmental Microbiology, 3rd Ed., ASM Press. Editors: C. J. Hurst, R. L. Crawford, J. L. Garland, D. A. Lipson, A. L. Mills, and L. D. Stetzenbach. pp. 182-189.

Gladyshev, E.A. and I.R. Arkhipova. 2007. Telomere-associated endonuclease-deficient Penelope-like retroelements in diverse eukaryotes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104:9352-9357.
Commentary by M. Joan Curcio, and Marlene Belfort

Gladyshev, E.A. and M. Meselson, and I.R. Arkhipova. 2007. A deep-branching clade of retrovirus-like retrotransposons in bdelloid rotifers. Gene 390(1-2):136-45.

Sanogo, Y.O., S.L. Dobson, S.R. Bordenstein, and R.J. Novak. 2007. Disruption of the Wolbachia surface protein gene wspB by a transposable element in mosquitoes of the Culex pipiens complex (Diptera: Culicidae). Insect Molecular Biology 16(2): 143-154.

Lo, N., C. Paraskevopoulos, K. Bourtzis, S.L. O'Neill, J.H. Werren, S.R. Bordenstein, and C. Bandi. 2007. Taxonomic status of the intracellular bacterium Wolbachia pipientis. International Journal of Systematics and Evolutionary Microbiology 57: 654-657.