Naim M. Bautista, Ph.D.
Hi there!
We are very happy of having some of our manuscripts featured! Below you can find the link to these pieces!
We got featured!
Local adaptation, or, plasticity?
“Deer mice have the broadest environmental range of any North American mammal, as they are distributed from the plains of Nebraska to the summits of the highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada,” said Storz. “This study tested whether they are able to thrive across such a broad range of elevations by evolving adaptations to local conditions or by possessing a generalized ability to acclimatize.”
“The results show us that the highlanders and lowlanders do not share a generalized ability to acclimatize to changing environmental conditions,” Bautista said. “Rather, the mice living at higher elevations share evolved ways to acclimatize to low oxygen conditions that are distinct from those of the lowland prairie mice.”
We got featured!
Mice mummies??
Tiny mice found mummified on the peaks of Andean volcanoes had made a home in the Mars-like environment, new evidence suggests—as impossible as the feat would seem. High in the Andes, tucked below the knee of South America’s western coast, is the Atacama Desert. One of the driest places on Earth, the region is such a brutal landscape that NASA astrobiologists visit it to understand how they might search for microscopic life on Mars. Scientists had expected life at the summits to be limited to microbes, but it turns out that isn’t the case. Instead, a new genetic analysis published on October 23 in Current Biology suggests that mice found living on the peaks aren’t outliers but representatives of a fairly persistent population.
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Here are also some links to press news and a YouTube video on this amazing research!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5vLWIneHQQ
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/31/world/mouse-mummies-andes-mountains-mars-scn/index.html
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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03282-1
https://www.ketv.com/article/nebraska-researcher-find-mummified-mice-on-volcano/45701641
We got featured!
The world’s highest-dwelling mammal isn’t the only rodent at extreme elevation
In the world’s highest mountain ranges, uncertainty about the upper elevational range limits of alpine animals represents a critical knowledge gap regarding the environmental limits of life and presents a problem for detecting range shifts in response to climate change. Here we report results of mountaineering mammal surveys in the Puna de Atacama, Central Andes, which led to the discovery of multiple species of mice living at extreme elevations that far surpass previously assumed range limits for mammals.
We got featured!
Study clarifies mystery of crocodilian hemoglobin
The extraordinary breath-hold diving capacity of crocodilians has been ascribed to a unique mode of allosterically regulating hemoglobin (Hb)-oxygenation in circulating red blood cells. We investigated the origin and mechanistic basis of this novel biochemical phenomenon by performing directed mutagenesis experiments on resurrected ancestral Hbs. The gain of bicarbonate sensitivity in crocodilian Hb involved the direct effect of few amino acid substitutions at key sites in combination with indirect effects of numerous other substitutions at structurally disparate sites
Our manuscript was shortlisted for the outstanding paper in JEB!
New insights into the allosteric effects of CO2 and bicarbonate on crocodilian hemoglobin
Crocodilians are unique among vertebrates in that their hemoglobin (Hb) O2 binding is allosterically regulated by bicarbonate, which forms in red blood cells upon hydration of CO2. Our results provide the first experimental evidence that bicarbonate binds directly to crocodilian Hb and promotes O2 delivery independently of CO2. This characteristic may be particularly important during breath-hold diving or digestion.
We got featured!
Zebrafish parents pass on resistance to oil spills
What is the influence of parental experiences on the performance and survivability of their offspring?. We aimed to answer this question by using the zebrafish as a model animal. We found that epigenetic cross-generational inheritance can lead to an immediate and simultaneous inheritance of both beneficial and maladaptive traits in a large proportion of the F1 larvae
