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WOOD HOLE, Mass. – Many crustaceans, including lobsters, crabs, and barnacles, have a cape-like shell protruding from the head that can serve a variety of roles, such as a small cave for storing eggs, or a protective shield to keep the gills moist. This shell (carapace), it has been proposed, did not evolve from a similar structure in a crustacean ancestor, but emerged de novo (or suddenly) through the rather random co-optation of genes that also determine insect wings. However, in a new study from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Research Associate Heather Bruce and Director Nipam Patel provide evidence for an alternative view: The carapace, along with other plate-like structures in arthropods (crustaceans, insects, arachnids, and myriapods) all evolved from the lateral toe lobe in a common ancestor. This evidence underpins their proposal for a new concept of how new structures evolve – which suggests that they are not so new. A study of the carapace of Daphnia crustaceans, a

A study of the herpes virus infecting chickens offers new insight into the potentially problematic interactions between vaccines made from live viruses and viruses that are meant to be thwarted. Reported in the journal Virulence, the study offers direct evidence that vaccines and viruses can infect the same cells in live animals and share the molecular tools that allow the virus to infect other animals – in this case, chickens. The study focused on Marek’s disease, a viral infection that is spread when a chicken inhales flakes of dead skin or feather tissue from an infected chicken. “We’ve been trying to understand how the virus spreads from one host to another,” said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign pathobiology professor Keith Jarosinski, who led the study. “Not only did we do it for the benefit of chickens in the poultry industry, but also because of a very similar mechanism used by the virus that causes chickenpox, where it enters through the respiratory tract and infects l