Biology subjects

Keays, D.

Publications and source records attributed to Keays, D..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2018

Revised testing procedures do not elicit magnetoreceptive behavior in C. elegans

A diverse range of species is known to rely on the Earths magnetic field for spatial information. Vidal-Gadea et al. claimed that C. elegans are magneto-sensitive, exploiting the magnetic field to guide their burrowing behavior [1]. Our attempts to replicate their findings were unsuccessful [2], which Vidal-Gadea attributed to the satiety of the animals and the environment in which they were raised. Here, we report our repeated experiments, having adopted several suggestions proposed by Vidal-Gadea et al. [3]. We find that shortening the length of the behavioral assay and raising the animals in a Faraday cage does not result in magnetotactic behavior. We reluctantly conclude that the assays employed by Vidal-Gadea are not robust or C. elegans are not magneto-sensitive.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2017

Improved genome assembly and annotation for the rock pigeon (Columba livia)

The domestic rock pigeon (Columba livia) is among the most widely distributed and phenotypically diverse avian species. This species is broadly studied in ecology, genetics, physiology, behavior, and evolutionary biology, and has recently emerged as a model for understanding the molecular basis of anatomical diversity, the magnetic sense, and other key aspects of avian biology. Here we report an update to the C. livia genome reference assembly and gene annotation dataset. Greatly increased scaffold lengths in the updated reference assembly, along with an updated annotation set, provide improved tools for evolutionary and functional genetic studies of the pigeon, and for comparative avian genomics in general.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2016

ISCA1 and CRY4: An improbable proposition

This manuscript was submitted to Nature Materials on December 15th 2015.\n\nIn their recent manuscript Xie and colleagues argue that the pigeon ISCA1/CRY4 complex acts as a magnetic protein biocompass having unambiguously proved that these two proteins interact forming a complex with unique biophysical features (1). We do not think the evidence presented in the manuscript supports this conclusion. Firstly, the authors provide no data (such as a reciprocal co-immunoprecipitation from retinal tissue) that demonstrates that ISCA1 and CRY4 interact in vivo, instead the conclusions are based primarily on overexpression in E.coli and in vitro reconstitution experiments. Secondly, their experiments have not employed the correct full length version of CRY4. The CRY4 protein expressed by Xie and colleagues was only 497 amino acids in length. We extracted mRNA from the pigeon retina (Invitrogen, 610.11), generated cDNA (Clontech, 121311), and performed rap ...

animal behavior and cognition↗