All posts containing "journal.pone"

February 8, 2010
03:10 PM
12 views

Racehorse Research Identifies Speed Gene

by GrrlScientist in Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

tags: evolutionary biology, molecular biology, Thoroughbred race horses, horses, aerobic capacity, muscle development, myostatin, MSTN, myostatin-suppressing C variant, myostatin-suppressing T variant, Horse Genome Project, Equinome, bpr3.org/?p=52,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper

Emerging from the mist is Rachel Alexandra, a champion American Thoroughbred who excels at winning both long and short distance races.

Image: Rob Carr, 2009, Associated Press [larger view]

If you've worked at or been around a racetrack very much, as I have, you'll quickly realize that everyone there has their own pet idea for picking winners. Horse breeders have always relied on pedigree analysis and studying the horse's conformation to predict whether a particular racehorse is better suited for running short or longer distances. But this is an inexact science that can waste valuable time, money and sometimes, horses. Which makes one wonder whether modern molecular biology can be applied to the challenge of identifying specific genes that make a particular horse better suited to running sprints or distances?
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »

Hill, E., Gu, J., Eivers, S., Fonseca, R., McGivney, B., Govindarajan, P., Orr, N., Katz, L., & MacHugh, D. (2010) A Sequence Polymorphism in MSTN Predicts Sprinting Ability and Racing Stamina in Thoroughbred Horses. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008645

February 5, 2010
03:29 PM
44 views

How to measure the progress of science (Rosvall and Bergstrom, PLoS 2010)

by Hannah W in Culturing Science – biology as relevant to us earthly beings

No one can deny that the field of science is undergoing explosive growth. The “technological age” has treated it kindly, giving it both access to new equipment and techniques, as well as creating a larger scientific community with more connections between labs around the world. We are bombarded with information in general: hundreds of papers [...]... Read more »

Rosvall, M., & Bergstrom, C. (2010) Mapping Change in Large Networks. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008694

February 5, 2010
05:53 AM
52 views

the rise of neuroscience

by Alex Holcombe in ceptional

So I knew neuroscience has exploded over the last few decades, but I didn’t know its emergence as a more autonomous discipline is “the biggest structural change in scientific citation patterns over the past decade”. In the authors’ words that follow, they are referring to their figure showing neuroscience emerging as a new citation [...]... Read more »

Rosvall, M., & Bergstrom, C. (2010) Mapping Change in Large Networks. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008694

February 4, 2010
04:06 PM
34 views

Adult neurogenesis in humans: Murine Features of Neurogenesis in the Human Hippocampus

by Jason Snyder in Functional Neurogenesis

Studies of adult neurogenesis often begin with the following sentence: “Adult neurogenesis occurs in all mammals examined, including humans.” More detail-oriented papers might say, “Adult neurogenesis occurs in all mammals examined, including humans…but not bats.” Here, the similarities between bats and humans become more evident than one might expect: it could be an equally long [...]... Read more »

Knoth, R., Singec, I., Ditter, M., Pantazis, G., Capetian, P., Meyer, R., Horvat, V., Volk, B., & Kempermann, G. (2010) Murine Features of Neurogenesis in the Human Hippocampus across the Lifespan from 0 to 100 Years. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008809

January 30, 2010
02:08 PM
49 views

Climate change, invasives and extinction in Thoreau's Woods

by Jeremy in Voltage Gate

The data that Thoreau collected is meticulous enough to be considered a viable, useful data source by modern researchers. Thoreau's records of the area's wildlife have been carried on by others, providing us with over 150 years of data regarding the phenology of Northeast American flora; that is, life cycle events like fruiting or flowering days or migration and how these events are influenced by the seasons and the climate. Simply put, after 150 years of suffering the effects of disturbance and climate change, the natural communities of Concord are not quite the forests and fields of yore.... Read more »

Willis, C., Ruhfel, B., Primack, R., Miller-Rushing, A., Losos, J., & Davis, C. (2010) Favorable Climate Change Response Explains Non-Native Species' Success in Thoreau's Woods. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008878

Willis CG, Ruhfel B, Primack RB, Miller-Rushing AJ, & Davis CC. (2008) Phylogenetic patterns of species loss in Thoreau's woods are driven by climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(44), 17029-33. PMID: 18955707

Miller-Rushing AJ, & Primack RB. (2008) Global warming and flowering times in Thoreau's Concord: a community perspective. Ecology, 89(2), 332-41. PMID: 18409423

January 30, 2010
11:00 AM
69 views

Which [Flying] Animal Can Drink You Under the Table?

by Allison in Dormivigilia

Syrian hamsters are not the only animals that can "drink you under the table." Frugivorous fruit bats have a high tolerance for alcohol in that marked alcohol consumption does not impair flying and/or echolocation. This high alcohol tolerance, of course, is attributed to fermented fruits being a diet staple.... Read more »

Dara N. Orbach, Nina Veselka, Yvonne Dzal, Louis Lazure, M. Brock Fenton. (2010) Drinking and Flying: Does Alcohol Consumption Affect the Flight and Echolocation Performance of Phyllostomid Bats? . PLOS One, 5(2). info:/10.1371/journal.pone.0008993

January 30, 2010
08:44 AM
44 views

On simple solutions

by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space

I didn’t post anything about the recent study1 showing that handwashing + face masks reduces influenza spread, because other blogs covered it fairly extensively (for example, here’s Avian Flu Diary’s commentary). Here’s another study giving a common-sense check:

… in a household setting, simple, readily available products such as 1% bleach, 10% vinegar and 0.01% [...]... Read more »

Greatorex, J., Page, R., Curran, M., Digard, P., Enstone, J., Wreghitt, T., Powell, P., Sexton, D., Vivancos, R., & Nguyen-Van-Tam, J. (2010) Effectiveness of Common Household Cleaning Agents in Reducing the Viability of Human Influenza A/H1N1. PLoS ONE, 5(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008987

Aiello, A., Murray, G., Perez, V., Coulborn, R., Davis, B., Uddin, M., Shay, D., Waterman, S., & Monto, A. (2010) Mask Use, Hand Hygiene, and Seasonal Influenza‐Like Illness among Young Adults: A Randomized Intervention Trial. The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 201(4), 491-498. DOI: 10.1086/650396

January 29, 2010
10:35 PM
83 views

Altruism-On-Demand: I’ll help, but only if you ask nicely…

by Kelsey in Mauka to Makai

On Thursday, scientists rescued a dog from the icy waters of the Baltic Sea…In December, a Portland, Maine “secret Santa” gave 100 strangers $100 apiece…And, so far, Americans have donated $29 million to American Red Cross Haiti relief efforts.
Humans are so darn nice. But how exactly did that happen? That’s what scientists at the Primate [...]... Read more »

Yamamoto, S., Humle, T., & Tanaka, M. (2009) Chimpanzees Help Each Other upon Request. PLoS ONE, 4(10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007416

January 29, 2010
08:25 PM
62 views

Highly Successful Mosquito Attraction with a Synthetic Scent

by Michael Long in Phased

Fredros Okumu (Ifakara Health Institute, Tanzania) and coworkers have developed a cheap "synthetic scent" that mosquitoes find to be even more attractive than human scent, which will enable realistic, effective mosquito control in resource-limited nations. This news feature was written on January 29, 2010.... Read more »

Okumu, F. O., Killeen, G. F., Ogoma, S., Biswaro, L., Smallegange, R. C., Mbeyela, E., Titus, E., Munk, C., Ngonyani, H., Takken, W.... (2010) Development and Field Evaluation of a Synthetic Mosquito Lure That Is More Attractive than Humans. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008951

January 28, 2010
11:31 AM
46 views

Presence of prion proteins in non-neuronal tissue in a case of variant CJD

by Brian Appleby in CJD Blogger

A recent article in the journal PLOS One describes a novel finding of abnormal prion proteins (PrPres) in additional non-neuronal tissues of a variant CJD (vCJD) patient. The study comes from the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center, located at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to this study, there was evidence that PrPres was present in some non-neuronal tissues as shown below. The present study examined other tissues for the possible presence of PrPres. Tissue samples were obtained from a patient with vCJD whose illness onset was within the U.S.A., but was likely acquired in the U.K. The autopsy examination used sodium phosphotungstate precipitation to detect the presence of PrPres. Immunohistochemistry was conducted with the monoclonal antibody 3F4 to the PrP residues 109-112. The presence and absence of PrPres in various tissues are summarized below. Several interesting findings include the presence of PrPres in the kidneys but not the bladder. This is pertinent because small amounts of PrPres have been detected in the urine of animals with prion disease. Also, the two organs are made of different cell types. The urinary bladder is composed of transitional cells, while the kidneys have a small amount of this type of cell. PrPres was also detected in the uterus and ovary, which poses the potential of vertical transmission. Although vertical transmission of BSE has been demonstrated in animals, there has been no evidence of this occurring in humans. These are important findings and they underscore the potential for transmission of vCJD, which we already know can occur in some blood products. Unfortunately, these findings do not tell us anything about the likelihood of transmission as the presence of PrPres has not always equated infectivity. This patient also had a prolonged survival time (32 months), which may have affected the extent of non-neuronal tissue propagation of PrPres. Technorati Tags: prion,variant CJD,vCJD,neuropathology,public health,biology,medicine Notari, S., Moleres, F., Hunter, S., Belay, E., Schonberger, L., Cali, I., Parchi, P., Shieh, W., Brown, P., Zaki, S., Zou, W., & Gambetti, P. (2010). Multiorgan Detection and Characterization of Protease-Resistant Prion Protein in a Case of Variant CJD Examined in the United States PLoS ONE, 5 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008765 ... Read more »

Notari, S., Moleres, F., Hunter, S., Belay, E., Schonberger, L., Cali, I., Parchi, P., Shieh, W., Brown, P., Zaki, S.... (2010) Multiorgan Detection and Characterization of Protease-Resistant Prion Protein in a Case of Variant CJD Examined in the United States. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008765

January 28, 2010
10:41 AM
50 views

Where is paleontology?

by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist

Last week, many of the leading journals in evolutionary biology - including The American Naturalist, Molecular Ecology, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, and a number of others - announced a data archiving policy. In short, this policy states that the data behind the results of a paper should be publicly archived in well-known respositories such as Data Dryad, GenBank, or TreeBASE. Do you notice anything missing in this illustrious list of publications?Not a single one of those journals explicitly focuses on paleontology. Last time I checked, we paleontologists like to think of ourselves as evolutionary biologists. Time and time again, we lament how we're not allowed a place at "The High Table" of evolutionary thought, and how paleontology is viewed as largely irrelevant by the "people who matter." So why weren't any paleontology publications on this list? Will we see any on the list in the near future?The article in The American Naturalist gives a good run-down of the arguments for sharing data, so I'll only briefly summarize them here:It allows reproducibility of analyses.It allows others to build upon your work more easily.Papers that release their data may get cited more frequently.The data will be lost to science otherwise.It's the right thing to do.And to counter some potential objections:This would only request the release of data directly relevant to the study. Not your pages and pages of raw notes. Just that Excel spreadsheet that you already generated on your way to the analysis. Seriously. It's not a lot of extra work, if any.This is not requesting the digitization and distribution of video, CT scan, or similarly large and unwieldy data (although that would be nice in the future).No, it does not mandate the release of locality data, or similarly privileged information.The policy does not require immediate release of the data, if there's a good reason (i.e., another pending publication) to do so. I'm not sure I entirely support this (if you're publishing the analysis, you should publish the data), but I understand it as a necessary compromise to get more individuals on board. I won't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.Some of the most ground-breaking and high-profile work in paleontology is happening on account of large meta-analyses of data pulled together from the literature - largely thanks to efforts like the Paleobiology Database. This work has real implications for big questions facing our science and our world: Climate change. The pace of evolutionary radiations. The origins of modern biological diversity. These sorts of databases focus primarily on geographic, stratigraphic, and taxonomic data - but think how much more powerful they could be if all of the morphological data ever published were available! Or if the PBDB volunteers didn't always have to transcribe the information from a PDF file.Look. Amateur hour is over. If we want to play in the big leagues, we have to start acting like a real science. Real science is reproducible. Real science is data-driven. Real science involves sharing data. Yes, I know it's hard. It's new. We haven't done things this way before. There are potential problems. Not everyone is adopting it quickly. But if we always wait five years to "see what happens," we paleontologists quite frankly don't deserve a place at the High Table. Let's be leaders, not followers.ReferencesPiwowar, H. A., R. S. Day, and D. B. Fridsma. (2007). Sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation rate. PLoS ONE 2(3):e308, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000308.Whitlock, M., McPeek, M., Rausher, M., Rieseberg, L., & Moore, A. (2010). Data archiving. The American Naturalist, 175 (2), 145-146 DOI: 10.1086/650340For previous posts on data sharing in paleontology, see here and here. Want to get involved? Spread the word. Talk to your local journal editor. Let the people who count know what you think.... Read more »

Whitlock, M., McPeek, M., Rausher, M., Rieseberg, L., & Moore, A. (2010) Data Archiving. The American Naturalist, 175(2), 145-146. DOI: 10.1086/650340

January 27, 2010
09:30 PM
42 views

Rapidly Diagnosing Lethal Blood-Based Fungal Infections

by Michael Long in Phased

Dominique Mazier (Universite Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris, France) and coworkers have used mass spectrometry to rapidly and unambiguously diagnose a blood-based fungal infection, faster than is possible through conventional diagnostics. This news feature was written on January 27, 2010.... Read more »

Marinach-Patrice, C., Fekkar, A., Atanasova, R., Gomes, J., Djamdjian, L., Brossas, J.-Y., Meyer, I., Buffet, P., Snounou, G., Datry, A.... (2010) Rapid Species Diagnosis for Invasive Candidiasis Using Mass Spectrometry. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008862

January 27, 2010
08:21 PM
46 views

Flower Power

by Roberta Kwok in Journal Watch Online

Thoreau's records help reveal plants' responses to climate change

... Read more »

Willis, C., Ruhfel, B., Primack, R., Miller-Rushing, A., Losos, J., & Davis, C. (2010) Favorable Climate Change Response Explains Non-Native Species' Success in Thoreau's Woods. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008878

January 26, 2010
12:32 PM
69 views

Cool paper, & winner of "worst new omics word award": Predatosome

by Jonathan Eisen in The Tree of Life

And the bad new omics words keep streaming in. Today's winner of the "Worst New Omics Word Award" is going to Carey Lambert, Chien-Yi Chang, Michael J. Capeness and R. Elizabeth Sockett from Nottingham for their use/ invention of "Predatosome". They use this term in the title of their new PLoS One paper: The First Bite— Profiling the Predatosome in the Bacterial Pathogen Bdellovibrio. Here is the very long sentence where the define it:The gene products required for the initial invasive predatory processes have not been extensively studied but the genome sequencing of B. bacteriovorus HD100 [1] revealed a genome of 3.85Mb, including a core genome similar to that of non-predatory bacteria and some 40% of the genome comprising a potential predicted “predatosome” of genes, encoding both hydrolytic products that may be employed in prey degradation, and genes that may be required specifically for host predation and thus are not conserved across the Proteobacteria.The paper is actually quite interesting. They use genomic approaches to characterize a fascinating organism - the bacterial species Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus. This bug is a predatory organism - eating other bacteria. Since it eats them from the inside out, some, including these authors, refer to this organism as a pathogen of other bacteria and their is some discussion here and elsewhere for its potential to serve as a "living antibiotic" in much the same way people are trying to use bacterial viruses (a.k.a. phage).The paper overall is quite nice on first read. They used microarray studies to characterize gene expression patterns in different phases of the life cycle (see Figure above for the life cycle outline). They backed up this work by quantitative PCR studies and regular RT PCR. And based upon their analysis they found some genes that are "Up-Regulated in Predatory, but Not HI" phase (HI stands for host-independent). And here is where they really tell us what they mean by predatosome:This category of 240 genes are very interesting as they potentially exclude those genes simply involved with release from attack-phase into growth, namely they should be part of the “predatosome” of predatorily specific genes.It seems to me this terminology is completely unnecessary. All they need to do is say they are studying the genes related to the predatory phase. To assign these genes to the "predatosome" is a bit much. They continue in the paper to report some really interesting stuff. For example, they also examine another predatory bacterial species, and look at whether there are genes conserved in the process between species. They made some really nice figures by the way about the different phases of hte life cycle in this organism and which genes are expressed:Anyway - the science in the paper is nice. However, the invention of yet another omics word is a bit much. And thus Lambert et al. are winners of the highly coveted "Worst New Omics Word Award" for their invention of "predatosome". Details on the paper are below - and that is where the figures come from too. (Hat tip to Bora for letting me know about the paper, and the word).Lambert, C., Chang, C., Capeness, M., & Sockett, R. (2010). The First Bite— Profiling the Predatosome in the Bacterial Pathogen Bdellovibrio PLoS ONE, 5 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008599Friendfeed comments below:
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This is from the "Tree of Life Blog"
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
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Lambert, C., Chang, C., Capeness, M., & Sockett, R. (2010) The First Bite— Profiling the Predatosome in the Bacterial Pathogen Bdellovibrio. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008599

January 25, 2010
08:24 AM
75 views

Language Structure and Social Structure

by Sean Roberts in The Adventures of Auck

Lupyan & Dale's recent article shows that social structure (e.g. population size) affects linguistic change. But can this dynamic be extended back in time to help think about the evolution of language?... Read more »

Lupyan G, Dale R. (2010) Language Structure Is Partly Determined by Social Structure. PLoS ONE, 5(1). info:/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559

Honda, E., & Okanoya, K. (1999) Acoustical and Syntactical Comparisons between Songs of the White-backed Munia (Lonchura striata) and Its Domesticated Strain, the Bengalese Finch (Lonchura striata var. domestica). Zoological Science, 16(2), 319-326. DOI: 10.2108/zsj.16.319

Isbell, L. (1996) The evolution of bipedalism in hominids and reduced group size in chimpanzees: alternative responses to decreasing resource availability. Journal of Human Evolution, 30(5), 389-397. DOI: 10.1006/jhev.1996.0034

January 22, 2010
09:20 PM
76 views

A Small Selection of Calorie Restriction Mimetic Drug Research

by Reason in Fight Aging!

Could a drug introduced in the 2010s be able to induce rejuvenation, the repair of age-related damage? To a very limited degree, yes. We would expect some types of drug, early and poor examples of which are presently undergoing investigation in the laboratory, to be able to stimulate the aged body to repair certain types of cellular damage and aggregate buildup that it would otherwise be unable to deal with - in other words to rejuvenate some aspects of cellular biology to their youthful states of operation. One line of research to this end is based on what has been learned from the study of the biochemistry of calorie restriction and exercise. A calorie restriction mimetic drug is one that replicates some of the biochemical changes in gene expression and cellular processes caused by calorie restriction - and hopefully thereby also produce noteworthy benefits to health and longevity. No existing medical technology even comes close to what calorie restriction can achieve in humans and other mammals, a fact also true of exercise. The traditional drug industry is sinking vast sums of money into discovering and developing pharmaceutical methods to capture the benefits of calorie restriction and exercise - things that...... Read more »

Onken, B., & Driscoll, M. (2010) Metformin Induces a Dietary Restriction–Like State and the Oxidative Stress Response to Extend C. elegans Healthspan via AMPK, LKB1, and SKN-1. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008758_id

January 22, 2010
06:16 AM
53 views

A flood of DRiPs

by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space

“Untitled (Green Silver)” – Jackson Pollock

In the past few weeks not only did I post a short update on the DRiPs hypothesis here, but coincidentally a bunch of papers on DRiPs have also been published. I’ll probably cover some of these in more detail at some point, but here are some of the recent papers [...]... Read more »

Cardinaud, S., Starck, S., Chandra, P., & Shastri, N. (2010) The Synthesis of Truncated Polypeptides for Immune Surveillance and Viral Evasion. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008692

Berger, C., Carlson, J., Brumme, C., Hartman, K., Brumme, Z., Henry, L., Rosato, P., Piechocka-Trocha, A., Brockman, M., Harrigan, P.... (2010) Viral adaptation to immune selection pressure by HLA class I-restricted CTL responses targeting epitopes in HIV frameshift sequences. Journal of Experimental Medicine, 207(1), 61-75. DOI: 10.1084/jem.20091808

Bansal, A., Carlson, J., Yan, J., Akinsiku, O., Schaefer, M., Sabbaj, S., Bet, A., Levy, D., Heath, S., Tang, J.... (2010) CD8 T cell response and evolutionary pressure to HIV-1 cryptic epitopes derived from antisense transcription. Journal of Experimental Medicine, 207(1), 51-59. DOI: 10.1084/jem.20092060

Casartelli, N., Guivel-Benhassine, F., Bouziat, R., Brandler, S., Schwartz, O., & Moris, A. (2009) The antiviral factor APOBEC3G improves CTL recognition of cultured HIV-infected T cells. Journal of Experimental Medicine, 207(1), 39-49. DOI: 10.1084/jem.20091933

January 21, 2010
06:17 PM
51 views

Searching for Rugged Enzymes Adapted to Switchgrass Processing

by Michael Long in Phased

Philip Hugenholtz (Joint Bioenergy Institute and Joint Genome Institute, California) and coworkers have discovered a rugged enzyme that will be useful towards an industrial-scale breakdown of switchgrass into synthetically-useful molecules, rendering switchgrass into a practical, renewable carbon source. This news feature was written on January 21, 2010.... Read more »

Allgaier, M., Reddy, A., Park, J. I., Ivanova, N., D'haeseleer, P., Lowry, S., Sapra, R., Hazen, T. C., Simmons, B. A., VanderGheynst, J. S.... (2010) Targeted Discovery of Glycoside Hydrolases from a Switchgrass-Adapted Compost Community. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008812

January 21, 2010
05:41 AM
52 views

ME TARZAN! Simple morphology: the result of a large, complex, multicultural language community?

by Psi Wavefunction in Skeptic Wonder

For a brief change of topic, let's take a look at language evolution! I wrote up the following novel review paper blog post for a non-biological evolution seminar course I'm involved with. We're essentially first examining various key topics in evolutionary biology (alas too briefly!), exploring how the by-now well-established field of evolutionary linguistics successfully applies evolutionary theory to languages (technically much of it before biology came along...linguists invented phylogeny!), and then playing around in the vast and violent Wild West that is cultural evolution, hopefully sufficiently equipped by then to discriminate shit from gold and ward off the marauding bands of pseudoscientists.For the record, I have a very limited linguistics training - only a handful of undergrad courses as my electives, so please point out and criticise any inaccuracies (and be generally skeptical, although I'd imagine most of my readers are by now =P) Any errors in attempts at explaining the linguistics behind the following paper are mine, and mine alone. Slightly edited to suit broader audience. Enjoy!Have you ever wondered why English seems so simple compared to some other languages, particularly those notious for complex grammar like Russian or German? Have you wondered whether there was any reason why the local [Pacific Northwest] languages are so complex and filled with intricate grammar? May I interest you in a very recent awesome paper from PLoS ONE: Language Structure Is Partly Determined by Social Structure Lupyan & Dale 2010 (open access) They examined 2236(!) languages and looked for correlation between their morphological complexity and the 'linguistic niche' -- whether the language is spoken over a vast area mostly by strangers, or used within a small tightly-knit community. The majority of the world's languages are 'esoteric' (smaller population, fewer neighbouring languages, smaller area; eg. Tatar, Piraha, Ju|'hoan, Nuu-chah-nulth), contrary to what is most obvious to us, ie the 'exoteric' languages like English or Swahili. One would expect that the use of an exoteric language as a lingua franca may result in some changes in its structure, as its 'purpose' or 'function', if you will, is quite different. Anyway, they found that: 1. Exoteric languages tend to be isolating; that is syntactic stuff (tense, person, etc) is marked by independent morphemes rather than affixes or other inflections. For example, in Russian (which is still very exoteric, but less than English or Mandarin) house would be /dom/, but to say "of [the] house" (that is, house[gentitive]) you say /doma/, using a suffix instead of a preposition to indicate the case. In this case, English would be more of an isolating language, whereas Russian is more of a fusional one. By the way, we Russians do use a mixture of both suffixes and prepositions -- would be interesting to see if the use of prepositions intensified over time as Russian became more dominant in its region. 2. Exoteric languages tend to have fewer case markings (see Russian example above); furthermore, Exoteric languages seem to use the Nominative/Accusative system (English, Russian, German, etc) rather than the Ergative/Absolutive system (eg. Basque), which still completely eludes me. Probably because it's rare and unusual. As far as I can 'understand', ergative languages basically use the object as the subject of the verb. Ie, 'dog walked' would actually mean 'walked' acted on the dog, ie the 'dog was walked'. Now 'dog walked boy' would mean 'the dog was walked by the boy', so the primary argument of the verb is the object, not the subject. Or something like that. When I was randomly reading up on some German back in the day, it was interesting to find their case system to be completely in ruins -- it was obviously about to become the grammatical analogue of a pseudogene! Many of their suffixes either repeat in different instances, or don't even exist anymore. It's a mess to learn, and it seems like modern German relies on their case system less and less. Furthermore, Old English had cases. Yes, this language once had a hard-core, well-structured and absolutely essential case system, just a few centuries ago! I wouldn't be surprised if German cases go the way of the English ones in a few hundred years... for the record, Proto-indoeuropean had something like 8 or 9 of them. 3. Exoteric languages have fewer grammatical categories marked in the verb -- some of you may remember from learning French (or Spanish, or German) the billions of different conjugation schemes you had to memorise for the verbs -- damn things had to agree in number, gender, various intricate tenses, aspects etc. English seems to be much simpler morphologically. And it is. This is how we inflect 'walk' in English: (remember I'm talking strictly about morphology -- the syntax is still quite complex and intricate) I, we, you, they - walk; he, she, it - walks past - walked progressive - walking Now to compare with Russian: infinitive -- /gulyat'/ (to go for a walk) (picking regular verbs) [1st person singular] /gulyayu/ [2nd p sg] /gulyayesh/ [3rd p sg] /gulyayet/ [1st p plural] /gulyayem/ [2nd p pl] /gulyayete/ [3rd p pl] /gulyayut/ past: [masculine signular] /gulyal/ [fem sg] /gulyala/ [neuter sg] /gulyalo/ [plural] /gulyali/ adverbial participle: /gulyaya/ imperative: [2sg] /gulyay/ [2pl] /gulyayte/ And probably a few more I missed. Now, Russian is a piece of cake compared to perhaps MOST of the world's languages! 4. Exoteric languages tend not to mark noun-verb agreement. As we've seen above, English is strikingly simple in that department -- there's only number agreement! Now, if French or Russian are intimidating, try thinking about inflecting the verb based on the subject AND the object AND how the verb is done by the subject onto the object... apparently, many languages do that. We had to look at Nuu-chah-nulth (aka "Nootka") in an introductory grammar&syntax course and oh my do they inflect for EVERYTHING. You have one word sentences that go on for a few rows of syllables...fascinating! 5. Exoteric languages seldom mark evidentiality by affixation -- that is, how a certain thing is known about is instead marked by verb choice and random modifiers. You may have noticed that academic writing requires a lot of cumbersome qualifiers and disclaimers embedded in every sentence, apparently. It tends to be that this may well be an inherent feature in research writing, or so I've heard. Some languages not only allow you to identify the nature of evidence for a statement, but actively require it much like English always requires tense (which, btw, not every language does; after all, 'today', 'in the past' and 'tomorrow' work perfectly fine instead!). It seems that this feature tends to mostly happen in the 'obscure' esoteric languages. Wikipedia has some nice examples from Pomo in the intro. 6. Exoteric languages are more likely to: a) encode negation lexically (eg. by EN 'no', FR 'ne...pas', RU 'nye', etc) rather than inflectionally (eg. JP -nai) b) have obligatory plural markers (as in EN 'one cat - two cats', RU 'odin kot - dva kota'; in contrast, Japanese and Mandarin don't bother with obligatory plural markings, although in JP you could add -tachi ('many') if you really want (disclaimer: not a JP speaker...) This is why English with the stereotypical Chinese accent lacks plural marking: "Very cheap -- two dollar!" It is very curious that this is one of the very few increases in morphological complexity in exoteric languages... Read more »

Lupyan, G., & Dale, R. (2010) Language Structure Is Partly Determined by Social Structure. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008559

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