@phdthesis{Zuehlke2017,
  author    = {Z{\"u}hlke, Martin},
  title     = {Elektrosprayionisation Ionenmobilit{\"a}tsspektrometrie},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-407452},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {viii, 113, XIV},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Die Elektrosprayionisation (ESI) ist eine der weitverbreitetsten Ionisationstechniken f{\"u}r fl{\"u}ssige Pro-ben in der Massen- und Ionenmobilit{\"a}ts(IM)-Spektrometrie. Aufgrund ihrer schonenden Ionisierung wird ESI vorwiegend f{\"u}r empfindliche, komplexe Molek{\"u}le in der Biologie und Medizin eingesetzt. {\"U}berdies ist sie allerdings f{\"u}r ein sehr breites Spektrum an Substanzklassen anwendbar. Die IM-Spektrometrie wurde urspr{\"u}nglich zur Detektion gasf{\"o}rmiger Proben entwickelt, die haupts{\"a}chlich durch radioaktive Quellen ionisiert werden. Sie ist die einzige analytische Methode, bei der Isomere in Echtzeit getrennt und {\"u}ber ihre charakteristische IM direkt identifiziert werden k{\"o}nnen. ESI wurde in den 90ger Jahren durch die Hill Gruppe in die IM-Spektrometrie eingef{\"u}hrt. Die Kombination wird bisher jedoch nur von wenigen Gruppen verwendet und hat deshalb noch ein hohes Entwick-lungspotential. Ein vielversprechendes Anwendungsfeld ist der Einsatz in der Hochleistungs-fl{\"u}ssigkeitschromatographie (HPLC) zur mehrdimensionalen Trennung. Heutzutage ist die HPLC die Standardmethode zur Trennung komplexer Proben in der Routineanalytik. HPLC-Trennungsg{\"a}nge sind jedoch h{\"a}ufig langwierig und der Einsatz verschiedener Laufmittel, hoher Flussraten, von Puffern, sowie Laufmittelgradienten stellt hohe Anforderungen an die Detektoren. Die ESI-IM-Spektrometrie wurde in einigen Studien bereits als HPLC-Detektor eingesetzt, war dort bisher jedoch auf Flussratensplitting oder geringe Flussraten des Laufmittels beschr{\"a}nkt. In dieser kumulativen Doktorarbeit konnte daher erstmals ein ESI IM-Spektrometer als HPLC-Detektor f{\"u}r den Flussratenbereich von 200-1500 μl/min entwickelt werden. Anhand von f{\"u}nf Publi-kationen wurden (1) {\"u}ber eine umfassende Charakterisierung die Eignung des Spektrometers als HPLC-Detektor festgestellt, (2) ausgew{\"a}hlte komplexe Trenng{\"a}nge pr{\"a}sentiert und (3) die Anwen-dung zum Reaktionsmonitoring und (4, 5) m{\"o}gliche Weiterentwicklungen gezeigt. Erfolgreich konnten mit dem selbst-entwickelten ESI IM-Spektrometer typische HPLC-Bedingungen wie Wassergehalte im Laufmittel von bis zu 90\%, Pufferkonzentrationen von bis zu 10 mM, sowie Nachweisgrenzen von bis zu 50 nM erreicht werden. Weiterhin wurde anhand der komplexen Trennungsg{\"a}nge (24 Pestizide/18 Aminos{\"a}uren) gezeigt, dass die HPLC und die IM-Spektrometrie eine hohe Orthogonalit{\"a}t besitzen. Eine effektive Peakkapazit{\"a}t von 240 wurde so realisiert. Auf der HPLC-S{\"a}ule koeluierende Substanzen konnten {\"u}ber die Driftzeit getrennt und {\"u}ber ihre IM identifi-ziert werden, sodass die Gesamttrennzeiten erheblich minimiert werden konnten. Die Anwend-barkeit des ESI IM-Spektrometers zur {\"U}berwachung chemischer Synthesen wurde anhand einer dreistufigen Reaktion demonstriert. Es konnten die wichtigsten Edukte, Zwischenprodukte und Produkte aller Stufen identifiziert werden. Eine quantitative Auswertung war sowohl {\"u}ber eine kurze HPLC-Vortrennung als auch durch die Entwicklung eines eigenen Kalibrierverfahrens, welches die Ladungskonkurrenz bei ESI ber{\"u}cksichtigt, ohne HPLC m{\"o}glich. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit werden zwei Weiterentwicklungen des Spektrometers pr{\"a}sentiert. Eine M{\"o}glichkeit ist die Reduzierung des Drucks in den intermedi{\"a}ren Bereich (300 - 1000 mbar) mit dem Ziel der Verringerung der ben{\"o}tigten Spannungen. Mithilfe von Streulichtbildern und Strom-Spannungs-Kurven wurden f{\"u}r geringe Dr{\"u}cke eine verminderte Freisetzung der Analyt-Ionen aus den Tropfen festgestellt. Die Verluste konnten jedoch {\"u}ber h{\"o}here elektrische Feldst{\"a}rken ausgeglichen werden, sodass gleiche Nachweisgrenzen bei 500 mbar und bei 1 bar erreicht wurden. Die zweite Weiterentwicklung ist ein neuartiges Ionentors mit Pulsschaltung, welches eine Verdopplung der Aufl{\"o}sung auf bis zu R > 100 bei gleicher Sensitivit{\"a}t erm{\"o}glichte. Eine denkbare Anwendung im Bereich der Peptidanalytik wurde mit beachtlichen Aufl{\"o}sungen der Peptide von R = 90 gezeigt.},
  language  = {de}
}
@misc{ZwickelKahlKlaffkeetal.2017,
  author    = {Zwickel, Theresa and Kahl, Sandra M. and Klaffke, Horst and Rychlik, Michael and M{\"u}ller, Marina E. H.},
  title     = {Spotlight on the underdogs},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-400438},
  pages     = {17},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Alternaria (A.) is a genus of widespread fungi capable of producing numerous, possibly health-endangering Alternaria toxins (ATs), which are usually not the focus of attention. The formation of ATs depends on the species and complex interactions of various environmental factors and is not fully understood. In this study the influence of temperature (7 °C, 25 °C), substrate (rice, wheat kernels) and incubation time (4, 7, and 14 days) on the production of thirteen ATs and three sulfoconjugated ATs by three different Alternaria isolates from the species groups A. tenuissima and A. infectoria was determined. High-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry was used for quantification. Under nearly all conditions, tenuazonic acid was the most extensively produced toxin. At 25 °C and with increasing incubation time all toxins were formed in high amounts by the two A. tenuissima strains on both substrates with comparable mycotoxin profiles. However, for some of the toxins, stagnation or a decrease in production was observed from day 7 to 14. As opposed to the A. tenuissima strains, the A. infectoria strain only produced low amounts of ATs, but high concentrations of stemphyltoxin III. The results provide an essential insight into the quantitative in vitro AT formation under different environmental conditions, potentially transferable to different field and storage conditions},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Zuo2017,
  author    = {Zuo, Zhe},
  title     = {From unstructured to structured: Context-based named entity mining from text},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412576},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {vii, 112},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {With recent advances in the area of information extraction, automatically extracting structured information from a vast amount of unstructured textual data becomes an important task, which is infeasible for humans to capture all information manually. Named entities (e.g., persons, organizations, and locations), which are crucial components in texts, are usually the subjects of structured information from textual documents. Therefore, the task of named entity mining receives much attention. It consists of three major subtasks, which are named entity recognition, named entity linking, and relation extraction. These three tasks build up an entire pipeline of a named entity mining system, where each of them has its challenges and can be employed for further applications. As a fundamental task in the natural language processing domain, studies on named entity recognition have a long history, and many existing approaches produce reliable results. The task is aiming to extract mentions of named entities in text and identify their types. Named entity linking recently received much attention with the development of knowledge bases that contain rich information about entities. The goal is to disambiguate mentions of named entities and to link them to the corresponding entries in a knowledge base. Relation extraction, as the final step of named entity mining, is a highly challenging task, which is to extract semantic relations between named entities, e.g., the ownership relation between two companies. In this thesis, we review the state-of-the-art of named entity mining domain in detail, including valuable features, techniques, evaluation methodologies, and so on. Furthermore, we present two of our approaches that focus on the named entity linking and relation extraction tasks separately. To solve the named entity linking task, we propose the entity linking technique, BEL, which operates on a textual range of relevant terms and aggregates decisions from an ensemble of simple classifiers. Each of the classifiers operates on a randomly sampled subset of the above range. In extensive experiments on hand-labeled and benchmark datasets, our approach outperformed state-of-the-art entity linking techniques, both in terms of quality and efficiency. For the task of relation extraction, we focus on extracting a specific group of difficult relation types, business relations between companies. These relations can be used to gain valuable insight into the interactions between companies and perform complex analytics, such as predicting risk or valuating companies. Our semi-supervised strategy can extract business relations between companies based on only a few user-provided seed company pairs. By doing so, we also provide a solution for the problem of determining the direction of asymmetric relations, such as the ownership_of relation. We improve the reliability of the extraction process by using a holistic pattern identification method, which classifies the generated extraction patterns. Our experiments show that we can accurately and reliably extract new entity pairs occurring in the target relation by using as few as five labeled seed pairs.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{ZohselHohmSchmidtetal.2017,
  author    = {Zohsel, Katrin and Hohm, Erika and Schmidt, Martin H. and Brandeis, Daniel and Banaschewski, Tobias and Laucht, Manfred},
  title     = {Langfristige Folgen fr{\"u}her psychosozialer Risiken},
  series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  journal   = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  number    = {609},
  issn      = {1866-8364},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43342},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-433424},
  pages     = {203 -- 209},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {In einer prospektiven L{\"a}ngsschnittstudie wurden Auswirkungen fr{\"u}her psychosozialer Risiken bis ins junge Erwachsenenalter untersucht und dabei die Rolle von affektiver und behavioraler Dysregulation im Kindesalter als vermittelndem Faktor {\"u}berpr{\"u}ft. Drei Monate nach der Geburt wurde das Vorliegen von 11 psychosozialen Belastungsfaktoren erfasst. Im Alter von 8 - 15 Jahren wurde dreimal das Child Behavior Checklist-Dysregulationsprofil (CBCL-DP) erhoben. Mit 25 Jahren wurde ein Strukturiertes Klinisches Interview durchgef{\"u}hrt und 309 der Teilnehmer f{\"u}llten den Young Adult Self-Report aus. Fr{\"u}he psychosoziale Risiken gingen mit einem erh{\"o}hten Risiko f{\"u}r das Vorliegen eines Substanzmissbrauchs im jungen Erwachsenenalter sowie mit erh{\"o}htem externalisierendem und internalisierendem Problemverhalten einher. Der Zusammenhang zwischen fr{\"u}hen psychosozialen Risiken und sp{\"a}terem externalisierendem bzw. internalisierendem Problemverhalten wurde durch das CBCL-DP vermittelt.},
  language  = {de}
}
@misc{ZohselHohmSchmidtetal.2017,
  author    = {Zohsel, Katrin and Hohm, Erika and Schmidt, Martin H. and Brandeis, Daniel and Banaschewski, Tobias and Laucht, Manfred},
  title     = {Die langfristigen Auswirkungen von Fr{\"u}hgeburtlichkeit auf kognitive Entwicklung und Schulerfolg},
  series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  journal   = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  number    = {701},
  issn      = {1866-8364},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43353},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-433536},
  pages     = {11},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {In einer prospektiven L{\"a}ngsschnittstudie wurde der Zusammenhang zwischen fr{\"u}her Responsivit{\"a}t der Mutter und kognitiver Entwicklung ihrer fr{\"u}h- bzw. reifgeborenen Kinder untersucht. Im Alter von drei Monaten wurde daf{\"u}r die Mutter-Kind-Interaktion mittels Verhaltensbeobachtung erfasst. Bei n=351 der teilnehmenden Kinder (101 fr{\"u}hgeboren) wurde die allgemeine Intelligenz (IQ) im Alter von 11 Jahren und bei n=313 (85 fr{\"u}hgeboren) zus{\"a}tzlich der h{\"o}chste erreichte Schulabschluss bis 25 Jahren erhoben. Fr{\"u}hgeborene wiesen mit 11 Jahren einen signifikant niedrigeren IQ als Reifgeborene auf, nachdem f{\"u}r m{\"o}gliche konfundierende Faktoren kontrolliert worden war. Nur bei Fr{\"u}h-, nicht aber bei Reifgeborenen zeigte sich ein signifikanter positiver Zusammenhang zwischen m{\"u}tterlicher Responsivit{\"a}t und IQ. F{\"u}r die Wahrscheinlichkeit einen h{\"o}heren Schulabschluss (mind. Fachabitur) zu erreichen, fand sich weder ein signifikanter Effekt von Fr{\"u}hgeburtlichkeit noch von m{\"u}tterlicher Responsivit{\"a}t.},
  language  = {de}
}
@misc{ZimmermannRaschkeEppetal.2017,
  author    = {Zimmermann, Heike Hildegard and Raschke, Elena and Epp, Laura Saskia and Stoof-Leichsenring, Kathleen Rosemarie and Schwamborn, Georg and Schirrmeister, Lutz and Overduin, Pier Paul and Herzschuh, Ulrike},
  title     = {Sedimentary ancient DNA and pollen reveal the composition of plant organic matter in Late Quaternary permafrost sediments of the Buor Khaya Peninsula (north-eastern Siberia)},
  series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  journal   = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  number    = {670},
  issn      = {1866-8372},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-41713},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-417130},
  pages     = {22},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Organic matter deposited in ancient, ice-rich permafrost sediments is vulnerable to climate change and may contribute to the future release of greenhouse gases; it is thus important to get a better characterization of the plant organic matter within such sediments. From a Late Quaternary permafrost sediment core from the Buor Khaya Peninsula, we analysed plant-derived sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) to identify the taxonomic composition of plant organic matter, and undertook palynological analysis to assess the environmental conditions during deposition. Using sedaDNA, we identified 154 taxa and from pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs we identified 83 taxa. In the deposits dated between 54 and 51 kyr BP, sedaDNA records a diverse low-centred polygon plant community including recurring aquatic pond vegetation while from the pollen record we infer terrestrial open-land vegetation with relatively dry environmental conditions at a regional scale. A fluctuating dominance of either terrestrial or swamp and aquatic taxa in both proxies allowed the local hydrological development of the polygon to be traced. In deposits dated between 11.4 and 9.7 kyr BP (13.4-11.1 cal kyr BP), sedaDNA shows a taxonomic turnover to moist shrub tundra and a lower taxonomic richness compared to the older samples. Pollen also records a shrub tundra community, mostly seen as changes in relative proportions of the most dominant taxa, while a decrease in taxonomic richness was less pronounced compared to sedaDNA. Our results show the advantages of using sedaDNA in combination with palynological analyses when macrofossils are rarely preserved. The high resolution of the sedaDNA record provides a detailed picture of the taxonomic composition of plant-derived organic matter throughout the core, and palynological analyses prove valuable by allowing for inferences of regional environmental conditions.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Ziegler2017,
  author    = {Ziegler, Moritz O.},
  title     = {The 3D in-situ stress field and its changes in geothermal reservoirs},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-403838},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {VIII, 110, XV},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Information on the contemporary in-situ stress state of the earth's crust is essential for geotechnical applications and physics-based seismic hazard assessment. Yet, stress data records for a data point are incomplete and their availability is usually not dense enough to allow conclusive statements. This demands a thorough examination of the in-situ stress field which is achieved by 3D geomechanicalnumerical models. However, the models spatial resolution is limited and the resulting local stress state is subject to large uncertainties that confine the significance of the findings. In addition, temporal variations of the in-situ stress field are naturally or anthropogenically induced. In my thesis I address these challenges in three manuscripts that investigate (1) the current crustal stress field orientation, (2) the 3D geomechanical-numerical modelling of the in-situ stress state, and (3) the phenomenon of injection induced temporal stress tensor rotations. In the first manuscript I present the first comprehensive stress data compilation of Iceland with 495 data records. Therefore, I analysed image logs from 57 boreholes in Iceland for indicators of the orientation of the maximum horizontal stress component. The study is the first stress survey from different kinds of stress indicators in a geologically very young and tectonically active area of an onshore spreading ridge. It reveals a distinct stress field with a depth independent stress orientation even very close to the spreading centre. In the second manuscript I present a calibrated 3D geomechanical-numerical modelling approach of the in-situ stress state of the Bavarian Molasse Basin that investigates the regional (70x70x10km³) and local (10x10x10km³) stress state. To link these two models I develop a multi-stage modelling approach that provides a reliable and efficient method to derive from the larger scale model initial and boundary conditions for the smaller scale model. Furthermore, I quantify the uncertainties in the models results which are inherent to geomechanical-numerical modelling in general and the multi-stage approach in particular. I show that the significance of the models results is mainly reduced due to the uncertainties in the material properties and the low number of available stress magnitude data records for calibration. In the third manuscript I investigate the phenomenon of injection induced temporal stress tensor rotation and its controlling factors. I conduct a sensitivity study with a 3D generic thermo-hydro-mechanical model. I show that the key control factors for the stress tensor rotation are the permeability as the decisive factor, the injection rate, and the initial differential stress. In particular for enhanced geothermal systems with a low permeability large rotations of the stress tensor are indicated. According to these findings the estimation of the initial differential stress in a reservoir is possible provided the permeability is known and the angle of stress rotation is observed. I propose that the stress tensor rotations can be a key factor in terms of the potential for induced seismicity on pre-existing faults due to the reorientation of the stress field that changes the optimal orientation of faults.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Zieger2017,
  author    = {Zieger, Tobias},
  title     = {Self-adaptive data quality},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-410573},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {vii, 125},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Carrying out business processes successfully is closely linked to the quality of the data inventory in an organization. Lacks in data quality lead to problems: Incorrect address data prevents (timely) shipments to customers. Erroneous orders lead to returns and thus to unnecessary effort. Wrong pricing forces companies to miss out on revenues or to impair customer satisfaction. If orders or customer records cannot be retrieved, complaint management takes longer. Due to erroneous inventories, too few or too much supplies might be reordered. A special problem with data quality and the reason for many of the issues mentioned above are duplicates in databases. Duplicates are different representations of same real-world objects in a dataset. However, these representations differ from each other and are for that reason hard to match by a computer. Moreover, the number of required comparisons to find those duplicates grows with the square of the dataset size. To cleanse the data, these duplicates must be detected and removed. Duplicate detection is a very laborious process. To achieve satisfactory results, appropriate software must be created and configured (similarity measures, partitioning keys, thresholds, etc.). Both requires much manual effort and experience. This thesis addresses automation of parameter selection for duplicate detection and presents several novel approaches that eliminate the need for human experience in parts of the duplicate detection process. A pre-processing step is introduced that analyzes the datasets in question and classifies their attributes semantically. Not only do these annotations help understanding the respective datasets, but they also facilitate subsequent steps, for example, by selecting appropriate similarity measures or normalizing the data upfront. This approach works without schema information. Following that, we show a partitioning technique that strongly reduces the number of pair comparisons for the duplicate detection process. The approach automatically finds particularly suitable partitioning keys that simultaneously allow for effective and efficient duplicate retrieval. By means of a user study, we demonstrate that this technique finds partitioning keys that outperform expert suggestions and additionally does not need manual configuration. Furthermore, this approach can be applied independently of the attribute types. To measure the success of a duplicate detection process and to execute the described partitioning approach, a gold standard is required that provides information about the actual duplicates in a training dataset. This thesis presents a technique that uses existing duplicate detection results and crowdsourcing to create a near gold standard that can be used for the purposes above. Another part of the thesis describes and evaluates strategies how to reduce these crowdsourcing costs and to achieve a consensus with less effort.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{ZibulskiWesenerWilkesetal.2017,
  author    = {Zibulski, Romy and Wesener, Felix and Wilkes, Heinz and Plessen, Birgit and Pestryakova, Luidmila Agafyevna and Herzschuh, Ulrike},
  title     = {C / N ratio, stable isotope (δ 13 C, δ 15 N), and n-alkane patterns of brown mosses along hydrological gradients of low-centred polygons of the Siberian Arctic},
  series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  journal   = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  number    = {672},
  issn      = {1866-8372},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-41710},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-417104},
  pages     = {14},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Mosses are a major component of the arctic vegetation, particularly in wetlands. We present C / N atomic ratio, delta C-13 and delta N-15 data of 400 brown-moss samples belonging to 10 species that were collected along hydrological gradients within polygonal mires located on the southern Taymyr Peninsula and the Lena River delta in northern Siberia. Additionally, n-alkane patterns of six of these species (16 samples) were investigated. The aim of the study is to see whether the inter-and intraspecific differences in C / N, isotopic compositions and n-alkanes are indicative of habitat, particularly with respect to water level. Overall, we find high variability in all investigated parameters for two different moisture-related groups of moss species. The C / N ratios range between 11 and 53 (median: 32) and show large variations at the intraspecific level. However, species preferring a dry habitat (xero-mesophilic mosses) show higher C / N ratios than those preferring a wet habitat (meso-hygrophilic mosses). The delta C-13 values range between 37.0 and 22.5\% (median D 27.8 \%). The delta N-15 values range between 6.6 and C 1.7\%(median D 2.2 \%). We find differences in delta C-13 and delta N-15 compositions between both habitat types. For some species of the meso-hygrophilic group, we suggest that a relationship between the individ-ual habitat water level and isotopic composition can be inferred as a function of microbial symbiosis. The n-alkane distribution also shows differences primarily between xeromesophilic and meso-hygrophilic mosses, i. e. having a dominance of n-alkanes with long (n-C29, n-C31 /and intermediate (n-C25 /chain lengths, respectively. Overall, our results reveal that C / N ratios, isotopic signals and n-alkanes of studied brown-moss taxa from polygonal wetlands are characteristic of their habitat.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{ZhuSchluppTiedemann2017,
  author    = {Zhu, Fangjun and Schlupp, Ingo and Tiedemann, Ralph},
  title     = {Allele-specific expression at the androgen receptor alpha gene in a hybrid unisexual fish, the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa)},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-403875},
  pages     = {14},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {The all-female Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa) is the result of a hybridization of the Atlantic molly (P. mexicana) and the sailfin molly (P. latipinna) approximately 120,000 years ago. As a gynogenetic species, P. formosa needs to copulate with heterospecific males including males from one of its bisexual ancestral species. However, the sperm only triggers embryogenesis of the diploid eggs. The genetic information of the sperm donor typically will not contribute to the next generation of P. formosa. Hence, P. formosa possesses generally one allele from each of its ancestral species at any genetic locus. This raises the question whether both ancestral alleles are equally expressed in P. formosa. Allele-specific expression (ASE) has been previously assessed in various organisms, e.g., human and fish, and ASE was found to be important in the context of phenotypic variability and disease. In this study, we utilized Real-Time PCR techniques to estimate ASE of the androgen receptor alpha (arα) gene in several distinct tissues of Amazon mollies. We found an allelic bias favoring the maternal ancestor (P. mexicana) allele in ovarian tissue. This allelic bias was not observed in the gill or the brain tissue. Sequencing of the promoter regions of both alleles revealed an association between an Indel in a known CpG island and differential expression. Future studies may reveal whether our observed cis-regulatory divergence is caused by an ovary-specific trans-regulatory element, preferentially activating the allele of the maternal ancestor.},
  language  = {en}
}