Odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) are small soluble proteins expressed at high levels in the proximity of olfactory receptors. OBPs act as solubilizers and carriers of the lipophilic odorants in the aqueous mucus of mammals and other vertebrates. OBPs have now been studied nearly thirty years, but in comparison to the wealth of data available on their structural chemistry and molecular biology, our knowledge about gene expression and function of these proteins is still insufficient. This work provides new insights into the tissue specificity of OBP and presents several new sequences of genes governing these proteins in selected species of mice.

Radim Žídek "Wnt/β-catenin signalling in the development of the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii" (dissertation) Abstract: Wnt/β-catenin signalling is absolutely crucial for the early embryonic development of metazoan animals from the establishment of body axes, through the specification of germ layers and tissues to the development of organ systems. I used pharmacological manipulations of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway activity in the planktonic larvae of the marine polychaete annelid Platynereis dumerilii, the representative of the clade Spiralia, to investigate the role of Wnt/β- catenin signalling in the development and evolution of three hallmarks of Bilateria: the central nervous system, the body segmentation and the digestive tube. Wnt proteins are produced in all three aforementioned systems in Platynereis where they trigger the Wnt/β-catenin pathway in neighbouring cells. I describe here, for the first time in Platynereis, a homologue of the endpoint transcription factor of the entire pathway, Pdu-Tcf, which is subjected to an alternative splicing and along with a Wnt target gene Pdu-Axin is expressed in tissues with the active Wnt signalling - in the brain ganglia, in the neuroectoderm along the ventral midline, in segments, in the posterior growth zone and in the gut. Pharmacological manipulations...

Interaction of genes and culture is crucial for human evolution. Human ethnic groups and subcultures frequently function as discrete units, and people clearly distinguish between in- group and out-group individuals on a cultural basis. This thesis aims to model the formation of distinct cultural clusters, cultural equivalents of distinct species. Historical development of theories of blending inheritance led to the formation of biometric parallels to Mendelism. Galton-Pearson model of nonparticulate inheritance with constant offspring variance, the most influential model of continuous inheritance ever formulated, was based on measurements of genetically transmitted traits. Ronald Fisher later demonstrated, that this type of inheritance directly stems from polygenic traits with additive genetic variance. Dan Sperber's metaphor of culture space allows integrating any continuous models of position inheritance into computer simulations of the evolution of culture. Most studies today, however, employ particulate models of cultural inheritance. The exceptional works of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman pioneer the continuous models of cultural inheritance applying Galton-Pearson model to culture. Galton-Pearson inheritance is, unfortunately, not a very good model of cultural transmission. Parental...

The research presented in my PhD thesis consists of phylogenetic, biogeographic, taxonomic and ecological research of Southern Hemisphere water scavenger beetles (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae) with a special emphasis on New Zealand. The introductory chapter provides a brief outline on the break-up of Gondwana and geological processes that shaped New Zealand and its fauna. Furthermore, the diversity of New Zealand Hydrophilidae and worldwide diversity of the hydrophilid subfamily Cylominae and its taxonomic history are illustrated. The scientific part of the thesis contains 4 published papers and 2 manuscripts. The first study recalibrates the Coleoptera time tree, providing new age estimates for the Hydrophiloidea, among others. The new age estimate is implemented in the second study, a phylogenetic study that reconstructs the biogeography of the 'Gondwanan' Cylominae beetles. The Cylominae, whose name was reinstated through nomenclatural priority over Rygmodinae in a separate paper, are found to consist of two tribes, Andotypini and Cylomini. The disjunct distribution of Cylominae is shown to be partly the result of vicariance and partly of long-distance oversea dispersal. The most remarkable long-distance dispersal is that of the only African representative of the subfamily which reached Africa from...

The frozen plasticity theory is a punctuationalist theory of adaptive evolution. It states that long periods of stasis, during which populations respond to selection pressures only by elastic change in the frequency of already present alleles, alternate in the evolution of sexual species with short periods of plastic evolution, during which alleles can get fixed or eliminated by directed selection. Asexual species are not expected to maintain such high genetic polymorphism in the long term. They should, however, be able to plastically respond to selection pressures throughout their whole existence. This difference between the evolutionary dynamics of sexual and asexual clades has a number of ecological and macroevolutionary implications. Concerning ecology, we could expect different environmental preferences of sexual and asexual species. Accordingly, in our first work that was based on a comparative study, we statistically significantly supported the hypothesis that (ancient) asexual groups of (eukaryotes) inhabit more stable and homogeneous habitats than their related sexual controls. Focusing on actually experienced, i.e. subjective, heterogeneity of the environment turned out to be the crucial factor of this type of research. From the viewpoint of macroevolutionary implications of the frozen...

The traditional assumption that perfumes are used only for masking of the body odour was doubted by the results of recent researches. In spite of the fact that the biological role of human body odour is very important, it is likely that perfumes are not in conflict with the body odour but there is mutual cooperation. Individuals could choose the scent which goes with their body odour instead of hiding it. In the theoretical part of this thesis I describe a dual inheritance theory, which is a basic concept for our research. We have been concerned with the interaction between biological effects of body odour and social effects of perfumes. Moreover, we have worked on the assumption that the body odour of relatives is similar. We have tested if people are better in their choice of the appropriate perfume for their relatives than for anyone else, in this case partners. Which perfume fits into which body odour was assessed by the independent evaluators of opposite sex because one of the main objectives of chemical signalling is to attract a potential partner. Surprisingly, the results of our research have shown that in the case of couples, the samples of the body odour and perfumes chosen by female partners were slightly better evaluated than the perfumes chosen by men themselves. Moreover, there were...

The presented study gives a comprehensive overview of the theory and the evidence for a systematically varying stellar initial mass function (IMF). Then we focus on the impact of this paradigm change, that is, from the universal invariant IMF to a variable IMF, on galaxy chemical evolution (GCE) studies. For this aim, we developed the first GCE code, GalIMF, that is able to incorporate the empirically calibrated environment-dependent IMF variation theory, the integrated galactic initial mass function (IGIMF) theory. In this theory, the galaxy-wide IMF is calculated by summing all the IMFs in all embedded star clusters which formed throughout the galaxy in 10 Myr time epochs. The GalIMF code recalculates the galaxy-wide IMF at each time step because the integrated galaxy- wide IMF depends on the galactic star formation rate and metallicity. The resulting galaxy-wide IMF and metal abundance evolve with time. Using this code, we examine the chemical evolution of early-type galaxies (ETGs) from dwarf to the most massive. We find that the introduction of the non-canonical IMF affects the best estimation of the galaxy properties such as their mass, star formation history, and star formation efficiency. Moreover, we are able to provide an independent estimation on the stellar formation timescale of galaxies, the...

Teleost fishes (Teleostei) encompass more than half of the extant vertebrate biodiversity. Their genomes display considerable plasticity and flexibility, going hand in hand with polyploidization events and repetitive DNA dynamics. Teleosts also display a striking diversity in mechanisms of sex determination and differentiation. The aim of the present thesis was to study the mechanisms underlying the karyotype and sex chromosome differentiation through cytogenetic mapping of repetitive DNA (by fluorescence in situ hybridization, FISH) in selected representatives of the African annual killifishes of the genus Nothobranchius (Teleostei: Nothobranchiidae). Nothobranchius spp. evolved a unique adaptation to freshwater temporary water pools whose existence is limited to periods of rainy season in African savannahs. Recent diversification, allopatric speciation in non-overlapping generations and small-sized populations together with known cytogenetics collectively suggest fast dynamics of chromosomal changes in Nothobranchius killifishes. The study took advantage of the availability of i) more populations of several closely related species for analysis and ii) data on specific repetitive DNA composition in selected Nothobranchius genomes as revealed by RepeatExplorer analysis. My work showed considerable...

Genetické programování (GP) je v určitém rozsahu schopno automaticky generovat požadované programy, aniž by uživatel musel určit, jakým způsobem má program postupovat. GP bylo s úspěchem použito k řešení široké škály praktických problémů z různých oblastí, přičemž výsledky byly často srovnatelné s řešeními vytvořenými člověkem. Doposud však nebyla zodpovězena otázka, zda GP dokáže generovat vysoce optimalizovaný výpočetní model (platformu) spolu s programem spustitelným na této platformě, který by řešil daný problém při dodržení všech omezení (například na plochu na čipu a zpoždění). V případě scénářů, kdy je optimalizováno více kritérií, by uživatelským výstupem měla být množina nedominovaných řešení s různými kombinacemi úrovně využití zdrojů (plocha, příkon) a výkonu (rychlosti provádění). Tento problém může být chápán jako souběžný návrh hardwaru a softwaru, zkráceně HW/SW codesign. Tato práce zkoumá způsoby, jakými lze souběžně evolučně vyvíjet platformu a programy v případě, že je problém zadán množinou vektorů vstupů a jim odpovídajících výstupů. Nejprve byl vytvořen model architektury a evoluční platforma zajišťující zpracování a evoluční vývoj těchto architektur. Kandidátní mikroprogramové architektury byly evolvovány spolu s programy pomocí lineárního genetického programování. Následně byla provedena série jednodušších experimentů. Navržená platforma dosahovala výsledků srovnatelných s nejnovějšími metodami. Na základě slabých míst objevených během počátečních experimentů byla platforma rozšířena. Rozšířená platforma byla poté ověřena na několika složitějších experimentech. Jeden z nich byla zaměřen na efektivní implementaci aproximace sigmoidální funkce. Platforma v tomto případě našla řadu různých řešení implementujících aproximaci sigmoidy, z nichž některá byla sekvenční a jiná čistě kombinační. V rámci experimentu byly evolučně nalezeny i známé algoritmy, přičemž některé z nich byly evolucí dokonce optimalizovány pro podmnožinu definičního oboru zvolenou pro daný experiment. Poslední sada experimentů byla zaměřena na evoluční návrh obrazových filtrů pro redukci šumu typu sůl a pepř. Platforma v tomto případě znovuobjevila koncept přepínaných filtrů a naezla variantu přepínaného mediánového filtru, která byla z hlediska výsledků filtrace srovnatelná s běžně používanými metodami. Tato práce prokázala, že pomocí genetického programování lze navrhovat a optimalizovat malé HW/SW systémy. Automatizovaný evoluční návrh složitějších HW/SW systémů zůstává otevřeným problémem vhodným k dalšímu výzkumu.

This thesis is a part of the project aimed at sequencing the genome and transcriptome of the bank vole (Clethrionomys glareolus). The role of natural selection in the evolution of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been subject to much discussion; while some studies did not provide evidence that selection affected the phylogeography of the studied species, other considered adaptive evolution important. The bank vole is the key model we use to study the adaptation to climate change. As with other species, the phylogeography of the bank vole has been based on the variation of a small part of mtDNA. The goal of the thesis was to sequence the entire mitochondrial genome for representatives of all main mtDNA lineages of the bank vole using the Sanger and Illumina technologies, and to assess the role of selection and adaptation in the evolution and phylogeography of this species. The adaptive evolution in mtDNA probably was not the main driving force during the postlacial colonization of Europe. However, signatures of adaptive evolution have been found - an amino acid change with possible functional consequences in one gene and an excess of radical changes in physical- chemical properties of amino acids in populations at the latitudinal (northern and southern) extremes of the bank vole distribution. Key...