Background The duplication of genes can occur through various mechanisms and is thought
to make a major contribution to the evolutionary diversification of organisms. There is …

Wnt signaling members are involved in the differentiation of cells associated with eyespot
and band color patterns on the wings of butterflies, but the identity and spatio-temporal …

Background The western flower thrips, Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande), is a globally
invasive pest and plant virus vector on a wide array of food, fiber, and ornamental crops. The …

Homeobox genes are key toolkit genes that regulate the development of metazoans and
changes in their regulation and copy number have contributed to the evolution of phenotypic …

Butterfly color patterns provide visible and biodiverse phenotypic readouts of the patterning
processes. Although the secreted ligand WntA has been shown to instruct the color pattern …

Spiders are a diverse order of chelicerates that diverged from other arthropods over 500
million years ago. Research on spider embryogenesis, particularly studies using the …

The Wnt genes represent a large family of secreted glycoprotein ligands that date back to
early animal evolution. Multiple duplication events generated a set of 13 Wnt families of …

Paired box genes are conserved across animals and encode transcription factors playing
key roles in development, especially neurogenesis. Pax6 is a chief example for functional …

Whole-genome duplications (WGDs) have occurred multiple times during animal evolution,
including in lineages leading to vertebrates, teleosts, horseshoe crabs, and …

MicroRNAs are small (∼ 22 nt) noncoding RNAs that repress translation and therefore
regulate the production of proteins from specific target mRNAs. microRNAs have been found …