Biogeography is a discipline included in comparative biology that studies the distribution of organisms, the distributional patterns of organisms are analyzed through the application of different methods, depending on the question formulated. In this work the principles and advantages of…

Diabetes mellitus is a syndrome which affects more and more people in all countries over the world. In Mexico, it is commonly treated with herbal extracts. Such treatment may be of considerable benefit especially during the early stages of the…

Traditional mycological knowledge of most Mexican ethnic groups has proven to be extensive and profound, consuming nearly 300 species of wild mushrooms. In this paper, we identified the mushrooms used by Zapotecs of Ixtlan, Oaxaca, compiled their traditional knowledge and…

Early in the twentieth century it was shown that Mendel's laws apply to plants and animals and that genes reside on chromosomes. In the 1950s the double-helix model of DNA inaugurated the molecular biology era, which culminated at the end…

Based on traditional medicinal knowledge, it was possible to identify the plant species Solanum chrysotrichum as the source of a new antimycotic agent designated SC-1. Cell suspension batch cultures from this plant were established in shake flasks, in which the…

The main goal of this study is to document the biogeographical patterns, current status and conservation of 24 species of vascular plants in Mexico, all of them recorded in some risk category in the Mexican official publication named 'Norma Oficial…

Ion channels lie at the heart of gamete signaling. Understanding their regulation will improve our knowledge of sperm physiology, and may lead to novel contraceptive strategies. Sperm are tiny (similar to 3 mu m diameter) and, until now, direct evidence…

Protein assemblies with a high degree of repetitiveness and organization are known to induce strong immune responses. For that reason they have been postulated for the design of subunit vaccines by means of protein engineering. The enzyme lumazine synthase from…

Background: In the past years, several studies begun to unravel the structure, dynamical properties, and evolution of transcriptional regulatory networks. However, even those comparative studies that focus on a group of closely related organisms are limited by the rather scarce…

Ricinuleids are one of the least investigated groups of Arachnida. In particular, knowledge of their ultrastructure is poor. Observations of the distal tarsomeres of ricinuleids show differences in their shape and equipment of surface structures. Legs I and II are…