The Science Magazine EurekaMag.com covers a wide range of topics including biology, agriculture, horticulture, forestry, geography, environment and health. Drawing from this pool of scientific disciplines, it publishes reviews on biological topics which have recently become popular. These reviews are divided into two main categories with comprehensive reviews including the Biology Keyword Category and the Biology Keyphrase Category. The Biology Review Category provides much shorter reviews of biology topics.
The review on Sexual Reproduction is comprehensive and covers the creation of new organisms by combining the genetic material of two parent organisms. Since the offspring receives a genotype compounded from two different histories, sexual reproduction introduces new gene combinations in a population. The review shows examples that adoption to environmental change is generally faster in sexual reproduction than in asexual reproduction. It, however, also shows that zones of exclusively asexual reproduction exist at environmental extremes where sexual reproduction is physiologically restricted. Such sexual isolation is considered a relatively unimportant secondary process, and it is suggested that the reproductive isolation observed between allopatric species is mostly an incidental outcome of sexual reproduction. The review also provides examples of plant species which are incapable of sexual reproduction but nevertheless dominate large areas. Examples include P. labradorica dominates large areas of coastal marsh in northern Quebec and Labrador through vigorous production of rhizomes. Sexual reproduction is a crucial process for dispersal of species to new sites but also for the local invasion process. Examples of such processes from Australia and New Mexico are presented. It is, however, shown that in such situations clonal (asexual) growth can be the predominant mode of reproduction.
The review on Inheritance covers the processes of genetic transmission of characteristics from parents to offspring. It includes details of studies on Graves' disease (GD). Genetic factors are important for predisposition to Graves' disease and several HLA alleles have been shown to predispose certain groups of people to the disease. The probably that an individual will be affected with GD can, thus, be predicted, based on sex, HLA genotype, and family history. The review includes studies of other diseases which can be at least in part inherited and include Gardner's syndrome, Hippel-Lindau Disease, neurofibromatosis, several types of cancer and pheochromocytoma-associated syndromes. Besides human biology it also covers inheritence in plants and particularly important agricultural crops including cotton.
The Science Magazine EurekaMag.com was launched in November 1998 as the online version of the French science magazine "Eur
