Danilo Amaral

Federal University of ABC | UFABC · Center of Natural and Human Sciences (CCNH)

Main conclusion Natural selection influenced adaptive divergence between Cereus fernambucensis and Cereus insularis, revealing key genes governing abiotic stress responses and supporting neoteny in C. insularis. Abstract Uncovering the molecular mechanisms driving adaptive divergence in traits related to habitat adaptation remains a central challe...

Fireflies have ignited human interest for ages with their glow. They are like little enchanting lanterns in the dark, creating a beautiful show, lighting up their surroundings with a chemistry trick. But their glow is not just for looks—fireflies use it to talk to each other. Each type of firefly has its own special way of blinking, like a secret c...

Bioluminescence is the production of visible light by living organisms. It occurs through the oxidation of specific luciferin substrates catalyzed by luciferase enzymes. Auxiliary proteins such as fluorescent proteins and coelenterazine-binding proteins can modify the wavelength of the emitted light or stabilize reactive luciferin molecules, respec...

Vision plays a vital biological role in organisms, which depends on the visual pigment molecules (opsin plus chromophore). The expansion or reduction of spectral channels in the organisms is determined by distinct opsin classes and copy numbers resulting from duplication or loss. Within Coleoptera, the superfamily Elateroidea exhibits a great diver...

Several firefly luciferases eliciting light emission in the yellow-green range of the spectrum and with distinct kinetic properties have been already cloned, sequenced, and characterized. Some of them are currently being applied as analytical reagents and reporter genes for bioimaging and biosensors, and more recently as potential color tuning indi...

Mapping biodiversity patterns across taxa and environments is crucial to address the evolutionary and ecological dimensions of species distribution, suggesting areas of particular importance for conservation purposes. Within Cactaceae, spatial diversity patterns are poorly explored, as well as the abiotic factors that may predict these patterns. We...

The molecular phylogenies of Cactaceae have enabled us to better understand their systematics, biogeography, and diversification ages. However, most of the phylogenetic relationships within Cactaceae major groups remain unclear, largely due to the lack of an appropriate set of molecular markers to resolve its contentious relationships. Here, we exp...

Here, we present a review of the studies of evolutionary genetics (phylogenetics, population genetics, and phylogeography) using genetic data as well as genome scale assemblies in Cactaceae (Caryophyllales, Angiosperms), a major lineage of succulent plants with astonishing diversity on the American continent. To this end, we performed a literature...

Cereus insularis (Cereeae, Cactaceae) is an insular endemic and dominant element of the vegetation of Fernando de Noronha Islands (FNI), a Neotropical archipelago 350 km from mainland Brazil. Here, we estimate the levels of genetic diversity for C. insularis and investigate its genetic relationship with the closely allied C. fernambucensis, which i...

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has dominated the scene of genomics and evolutionary biology as a great amount of genomic data have been accumulated for a diverse set of species. At the same time, phylogenetic approaches and programs are in development to allow better use of such large-size datasets. Phylogenomics appears as a promising field to a...

The Neotropical region is the richest in bioluminescent Coleoptera species, however, its bioluminescence megadiversity is still underexplored in terms of genomic organization and evolution, mainly within the Phengodidae family. The railroad worm Phrixothrix hirtus is an important biological model and symbolic species due to its bicolor bioluminesce...

Aim The interconnectedness and biotic interchange among Neotropical biomes are thought to play an important role in driving adaptation and diversification. However, how these processes are in synteny to trait evolution in species of open and xeric areas is poorly studied. Here, we investigate the spatial and temporal dimensions of evolution and can...

During a search for bioluminescent marine annelids around the island of Carrie Bow Cay, Belize, we discovered bioluminescence in the sipunculan worm Nephasoma pellucidum. The identification of N. pellucidum was verified by DNA barcoding of ∼650 bp of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I gene, using sequences of the same species from previous st...

Main conclusion: The first South American cactus nuclear genome assembly associated with comparative genomic analyses provides insights into nuclear and plastid genomic features, such as size, transposable elements, and metabolic processes related to cactus development. Here, we assembled the partial genome, plastome, and transcriptome of Cereus f...

Bioluminescence in Diptera is found in the Keroplatidae family (Diptera), within Arachnocampininae and Keroplatinae subfamilies, with reported occurrences in Oceania, Eurasia, and Americas. Larvae of Orfelia fultoni, which inhabit stream banks in the Appalachian Mountains, emit the bluest bioluminescence among insects, using it for prey attraction,...

This study aimed to characterize six Streptomyces strains associated with potato scab in south Brazil through polyphasic taxonomy involving morphology, pathogenicity and genetic features. These strains were compared with other potato-scab Streptomyces species mainly S. europaeiscabiei, S. scabiei and S. stelliscabiei. South-Brazilian Streptomyces s...

Firefly luciferases usually emit green-yellow bioluminescence at physiological pH values. However, under acidic conditions, in the presence of heavy metals and, at high temperatures they emit red bioluminescence. To understand the structural origin of bioluminescence colors and pH-sensitivity, about 20 firefly luciferases have been cloned, sequence...

Larvae of O. fultoni (Keroplatidae: Keroplatinae), which occur along river banks in the Appalachian Mountains in Eastern United States, produce the bluest bioluminescence among insects from translucent areas associated to black bodies, which are located mainly in the anterior and posterior parts of the body. Although closely related to Arachnocampa...

Blue shining fungus gnats (Diptera) had been long reported in the Waitomo caves of New Zealand (Arachnocampa luminosa Skuse), in stream banks of the American Appalachian Mountains (Orfelia fultoni Fisher) in 1939 and in true spore eating Eurasiatic Keroplatus Bosc species. This current report observes that similar blue light emitting gnat larvae al...

Bioluminescence, the emission of visible light in a living organism, is an intriguing phenomenon observed in different species and environments. In terrestrial organisms, the bioluminescence is observed mainly in beetles of the Elateroidea superfamily (Coleoptera). Several phylogenetic studies have been used different strategies to propose a scenar...

The Malpighian tubules in insects play an essential role in osmoregulation, through the transport of ions during excretion, whereas the fat body is usually associated with the intermediary metabolism. The tubules also are involved in excretion of organic solutes and xenobiotics. However, with the exception of a preliminary transcriptional survey of...

Bioluminescence in the superfamily Elateroidea is produced by specific light organs distributed in different parts of the body depending on the life stage and family. Whereas the luciferin-luciferase system is well known, the molecular control of bioluminescence, the biosynthetic route of luciferin, and the molecular differentiation of photogenic t...

Bioluminescence in Diptera is found in the family Keroplatidae, in the glowworms of the genera Arachnocampa, Orfelia and Keroplatus. Despite belonging to the same family, Arachnocampa spp. and Orfelia fultoni display morphologically and biochemically distinct bioluminescence systems: Arachnocampa spp. produce light by the terminal ends of Malpighia...

The evolutionary and developmental origins of firefly lanterns remain a mystery. In fireflies, the bioluminescent system involves a benzothiazolic luciferin, ATP, a luciferase, and complex lanterns consisting of different tissues including a photogenic one. Whereas the biochemical reaction and the structure of lanterns are quite well known, the evo...

Bioluminescence in beetles is found in the Elateroidea superfamily, which includes Elateridae, Lampyridae, Rhagophthalmidae, and Phengodidae families. Despite sharing the same biochemical system, it is unclear whether the lanterns and the bioluminescent system share a common origin or not. To better understand the molecular differentiation of photo...

Bioluminescent click-beetles display a wide variation of bioluminescence colors ranging from green to orange, including an unusual intra-specific color variation in the Jamaican Pyrophorus plagiophthalamus. Recently, we collected individuals of the Pyrophorus angustus species from the Southern Amazon forest, in Brazil, which displays an orange ligh...

Luminescent termite mounds caused by colonization of the luminescent larvae of the click beetle Pyrearinus termitilluminans (Costa, 1982) are well reported in Cerrado ecosystems (savannas) in central west Brazil (Costa 1982). Although luminous termite mounds were occasionally reported in the Amazon forest, they have not been studied as extensively....

Introduction. The bioluminescence mechanism of luciferin-luciferase reaction is the same for the all the bioluminescent families within Elateroidea group, involving oxidation of D-luciferin from ATP catalyzed by homolog luciferases[1]. Among Elateridae a wide bioluminescence color variation was observed among different species, and even among indiv...

The control region (CR) or A + T-rich region in Coleoptera mt genome is poorly characterized, including the Elateroidea bioluminescent species. Here, we provided the first attempt to characterize and compare the structure and organization of the CR of different species within Elateridae. We also revisited some sequenced Coleoptera CR and observed c...

Mitochondrial genome organization in the Elateroidea superfamily (Coleoptera), which include the main families of bioluminescent beetles, has been poorly studied and lacking information about Phengodidae family. We sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of Neotropical Lampyridae (Bicellonycha lividipennis), Phengodidae (Brasilocerus sp.2 and Phrixtoth...

Fungus-gnats of the genus Arachnocampa are unique among bioluminescent insects for displaying blue-green bioluminescence, and are responsible for one of the most beautiful bioluminescence spectacles on the roofs of the Waitomo Caves. Despite morphological studies showing that Arachnocampa larval lanterns involve specialization of the Malpighian tub...

The Malpighian tubules play a key role in insect osmoregulation. Although a transcriptional analysis has been done for the Malpighian tubules in Drosophila melanogaster (Diptera), no functional genomics analysis has yet been carried out for any Coleoptera species. Recently, we constructed a cDNA library from Malpighian tubules of larval Zophobas mo...

Bioluminescence in beetles is found mainly in the Elateroidea superfamily (Elateridae, Lampyridae and Phengodidae). The Neotropical region accounts for the richest diversity of bioluminescent species in the world with about 500 described species, most occurring in the Amazon, Atlantic rainforest and Cerrado (savanna) ecosystems in Brazil. The origi...

Beetle luciferases produce different bioluminescence colors from green to red using the same D-luciferin substrate. Despite many studies on the mechanisms and structural determinants of bioluminescence colors with firefly luciferases, the identity of the emitters as well as the specific active site interactions responsible for bioluminescence color...

Beetle luciferases emit different bioluminescence colors from green to red, however, the structural determinants and mechanisms of spectral modulation are not fully understood. Nno clear relationship between the physical-chemical identity of the luciferin binding site residues and bioluminescence colors was found in different luciferases, and it is...

Bioluminescent click-beetles emit a wide range of bioluminescence colors (λ(Max) = 534-594 nm) from thoracic and abdominal lanterns, which are used for courtship. Only the luciferases from Pyrophorus and Pyrearinus species were cloned and sequenced. The Brazilian Fulgeochlizus bruchi click-beetle, which inhabits the Central-west Cerrado (Savannas),...

Firefly luciferases usually produce bioluminescence in the yellow-green region, with colors in the green and yellow-orange extremes of the spectrum being less common. Several firefly luciferases have already been cloned and sequenced, and site-directed mutagenesis studies have already identified important regions and residues for bioluminescence co...