Joanna Stojak

Institute of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences | IGHZ · Department of Experimental Embrylogy

The vertebrate photoperiodic neuroendocrine system uses the photoperiod as a proxy to time the annual rhythms in reproduction. The thyrotropin receptor (TSHR) is a key protein in the mammalian seasonal reproduction pathway. Its abundance and function can tune sensitivity to the photoperiod. To investigate seasonal adaptation in mammals, the hinge r...

Undoubtedly, genetic factors play an important role in susceptibility and resistance to COVID-19. In this study, we conducted the GWAS analysis. Out of 15,489,173 SNPs, we identified 18,191 significant SNPs for severe and 11,799 SNPs for resistant phenotype, showing that a great number of loci were significant in different COVID-19 representations....

Aim: Many species experienced population turnover and local extinction during the Late Pleistocene. In the case of megafauna, it remains challenging to disentangle climate change and the activities of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers as the main cause. In contrast, the impact of humans on rodent populations is likely to be negligible. This study inves...

Many species experienced population turnover and local extinction during the Late Pleistocene. In the case of megafauna, it remains challenging to disentangle climate change and the activities of Palaeolithic hunter‐gatherers as the main cause. In contrast, the impact of humans on rodent populations is likely to be negligible. This study investigat...

Aim The common vole is a temperate rodent widespread across Europe. It was also one of the most abundant small mammal species throughout the Late Pleistocene. Phylogeographic studies of its extant populations suggested the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 26.5–19 ka ago) as one of the main drivers of the species’ population dynamics. However, analyses ba...

Background: Severe outcomes of COVID-19 account for up to 15% of all cases. The study aims to check if any gene variants related to cardiovascular (CVD) and pulmonary diseases (PD) are correlated with a severe outcome of COVID-19 in a Polish cohort of COVID-19 patients. Methods: In this study, a subset of 747 samples from unrelated individuals coll...

1. The historical biogeography of the terrestrial mammals in Europe has been widely studied on the basis of fossil records and molecular makers. However, to date, only one model of species' responses to glacial-interglacial cycles during the glacial episodes of the Quaternary, especially during the Last Glacial Maximum, has been proposed: the 'expa...

COVID-19 infections pose a serious global health concern so it is crucial to identify the biomarkers for the susceptibility to and resistance against this disease that could help in a rapid risk assessment and reliable decisions being made on patients' treatment and their potential hospitalisation. Several studies investigated the factors associate...

The vertebrate photoperiodic neuroendocrine system uses photoperiod as a proxy to time annual rhythms in reproduction. To investigate seasonal adaptation in mammals, the hinge region and the first part of the transmembrane domain of the Tshr gene were sequenced for 278 common vole ( Microtus arvalis ) specimens from 15 localities in Western Europe,...

Carnivores tend to exhibit a lack of (or less pronounced) genetic structure at continental scales in both a geographic and temporal sense and this can confound the identification of post‐glacial colonization patterns in this group. In this study we used genome‐wide data (using Genotyping‐by‐Sequencing (GBS)) to reconstruct the phylogeographic histo...

Polymorphism in innate immune genes in host populations can structure spatial variation in the prevalence of infectious diseases. In Europe, Borrelia afzelii is an important tick-borne pathogen of small mammals including the bank voles (Myodes glareolus). The Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) is an innate immune receptor that is important for detecting B...

Southern and northern glacial refugia are considered paradigms that explain the complex phylogeographical patterns and processes of European biota. Here, we provide a revisited statistical phylogeographical analysis of the pygmy shrew Sorex minutus Linnaeus, 1766 (Eulipotyphla, Soricidae), examining its genetic diversity, genetic differentiation an...

Carnivores tend to exhibit a lack of (or less pronounced) genetic structure at continental scales in both a geographic and temporal sense using various mitochondrial DNA markers on modern and/or ancient specimens. This tends to confound the identification of refugial areas and post-glacial colonization patterns in this group. In this study we used...

Southern and northern glacial refugia are considered paradigms that explain the complex phylogeographical patterns and processes of European biota. Here, we provide a revisited statistical phylogeographical analysis of the pygmy shrew Sorex minutus Linnaeus, 1766 (Eulipotyphla, Soricidae), examining its genetic diversity, genetic differentiation an...

Southern and northern glacial refugia are considered paradigms that explain the complex phylogeographic patterns and processes of European biota. Although the Eurasian pygmy shrew Sorex minutus Linnaeus, 1766 (Eulipotyphla, Soricidae) has been used a model species to study geographic isolation and genetic diversification in Mediterranean peninsulas...

Supplementary Materials

Background: In Europe, hantaviruses cause serious human disease, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). The geographic distribution of human cases of HFRS is a consequence of distribution of reservoir host species. Epidemiology of HFRS is well-studied in Western Europe, while data from Central and Eastern Europe are poor or unavailable. Me...

The publisher regret that in the Table 1 the data under column “Estimated age (kya)” aligned with the table entry “European moose (Alces alces)” was interchanged, original reading “20–35 Eastern/Western/Central” should have been “Eastern/Western/Central 20–35”. The original article has been corrected.

The tapeworm species Spirometra erinaceieuropaei was documented mainly in Asia and Europe. In recent years, plerocercoid larvae (spargana) of this parasite have been found in different hosts in northeastern Poland. The evolutionary history and way of S. erinaceieuropaei spreading across Eurasia have been not described yet. However, this phenomenon...

Present-day species distribution and patterns of genetic diversity in Europe are a result of post-glacial re-colonization from glacial refugia after the Last Glacial Maximum. This process led to the formation of secondary contact zones (suture zones) between the haplogroups of different species, and were induced by several factors, including climat...

Filogeografia zajmuje się poznawaniem zasad i procesów rządzących geograficznym rozmieszeniem linii rodowych (genetycznych), a w szczególności tych w obrębie jednego gatunku lub pomiędzy blisko spokrewnionymi gatunkami. W celu ustalenia i zobrazowania ewolucyjnych zależności pomiędzy liniami genetycznymi wykorzystywane są techniki biologii molekula...

Pies jest najstarszym zwierzęciem udomowionym przez człowieka, jednak przegląd literatury udowadnia, że czas i miejsce jego domestykacji nadal pozostają niejasne. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest przedstawienie, jak prawdopodobnie mógł przebiegać proces udomowienia psa oraz zaprezentowanie jego przyczyn i skutków. **********************************...

The Eurasian field vole (Microtus agrestis) comprises three evolutionarily significant units (ESUs). The northern ESU is found at higher latitudes across the western Palaearctic region and includes six, largely allopatric, mitochondrial DNA lineages that were derived from population bottlenecks. One of these lineages is found in southern Britain an...

Proces udomowienia charakteryzuje się zmianami w cechach i właściwościach fizjologicznych, morfologicznych, psychicznych czy rozwojowych dzikiego prototypu udomowionego gatunku na skutek działalności człowieka (tzw. sztucznej selekcji). Niniejszy artykuł prezentuje (1) przyczyny prowadzące do udomowienia tak wielu gatunków, (2) lokalizację pierwotn...

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of climate on the distribution and present-day genetic structure of the common vole (Microtus arvalis) and the field vole (Microtus agrestis). In this study, we used previously published data on the genetic structure (using microsatellite DNA) of the common and field vole in Central Europe and...

Entomotoxicology allows the estimation of the post-mortem interval and the determination of the cause of death in cases in which the corpse has decomposed and the tissues necessary for toxicological analysis are no longer available. Obtaining information about toxic substances potentially present in the body is possible by isolation of larvae and p...

The common vole (Microtus arvalis) has been a model species of small mammal for studying end-glacial colonization history. In the present study we expanded the sampling from central and eastern Europe, analyzing contemporary genetic structure to identify the role of a potential 'northern glacial refugium', i.e. a refugium at a higher latitude than...

Genetic structure in common voles from central Europe. Genetic structure of Microtus arvalis populations in central Europe, based on a Bayesian analysis of microsatellite data with K = 2. The pattern is consistent with the presence of western and eastern groups (as previously observed in [34]). Dots show point locations depicted according to the po...

Bayesian genealogy of the common vole from Europe. Maximum clade credibility tree for 786 cytochrome b sequences of Microtus arvalis, summarized and annotated from 7200 trees re-sampled from 720 million post-burnin generations of Bayesian genealogy sampling. For genealogy calibration the substitution rate of 3.27 x 10−7 substitutions/site/year was...

The evaluation of the STRUCTURE results for the common vole from central Europe. The Evanno et al. [61] ΔK (continuous line, left Y axis) and the mean log probability Ln(K) (open points, right Y axis) results from STRUCTURE for Microtus arvalis from central Europe based on the microsatellite data. (TIF)

The sPCA plots for the common vole from central Europe. Two representations of scores obtained for each population using Spatial Principal Components Analysis (sPCA), with a grid indicating the geographical relationship of the populations. The black and white squares (or grey level variant) represent positive and negative values respectively. Only...

The results of the sPCA for the common vole from central Europe. Spatial Principal Component Analysis (sPCA) based on microsatellites of the common vole from central Europe. (A) Positive and negative eigenvalues which reflect potential global and local structure respectively. Only the first principal component is of sufficient magnitude to be retai...

List of specimens of Microtus arvalis for which new cytochrome b sequences were obtained for this study, including their site of origin (country codes: PL–Poland, BY–Belarus, RU–Russia, MDV–Moldova, UKR–Ukraine, RO–Romania, SLO–Slovenia, CR–Croatia, CZ–Czech Republic, HU–Hungary, SB–Serbia). (DOCX)

Distribution of nucleotide polymorphisms with data organized by individual nucleotides (upper panel) and triplets (lower panel) in the Microtus arvalis cytochrome b sequences from newly-collected samples from central Europe. (DOCX)

Estimates of multilocus FST between all population pairs of Microtus arvalis based on microsatellites. Population labels are given according to S3 Table. Significant values are given after Bonferroni correction and marked by ‘*’. (DOCX)

Bayesian skyline plot for the Eastern mtDNA lineage of the common vole. Bayesian skyline plot presenting demographic change in the Eastern mtDNA lineage of the common vole with the effective female population size on a log scale against time from the present to 17.5 kya. (TIF)

The microsatellite data obtained in this study for 8 loci of the common vole. The missing data are marked by ‘-9’. (XLSX)

Characteristics of loci used in the microsatellite analysis of the whole Microtus arvalis dataset including observed (HO) and expected (HE) heterozygosity and null alleles. (DOCX)

List of those collection localities from central and eastern Europe mapped in Fig 1B which provided previously published data for this study but which were not used to generate new cytb or microsatellite data. The full list of previously published cytb sequences that were used in this study are available in S1, S2 and S4 Tables in [30]. The numbers...

Diversity indices for samples of Microtus arvalis used in this study for microsatellite analysis including sampling locality with geographic coordinates, sample size (n), observed (HO) and expected (HE) heterozygosity, allelic richness (AR) and the inbreeding coefficient (FIS). Samples used in the previous study of Stojak et al. [34] are marked by...

The common vole (Microtus arvalis) and the field vole (Microtus agrestis) are morphologically similar species but are ecological distinctive and differ in the details of their evolutionary history as revealed by mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The aim of this study is to describe patterns of genetic variability using microsatellite markers in population...

There is now considerable evidence for the survival of temperate species within glacial refugia that were situated at relatively high latitudes, notably the Carpathian Basin and Dordogne region in Europe. However, the prevalence of fossil remains in such locations is rarely matched by molecular evidence for their contribution to subsequent geograph...

Forensic entomology uses insects to determine the time, cause and place of death. To this end, two entomological methods are used. The development-based method uses the patterns of insect larvae development under the specific thermal and environmental conditions. The succession-based method analyzes the sequence of insect succession on the body in...