Conservation biology is a scientific field that focuses on the preservation of biodiversity in order to protect ecosystems while meeting the needs of the human population. Humans require properly functioning ecosystems to maintain our supply of natural resources, including food, medicines, and building materials.

Small population sizes put a species at extreme risk of extinction due to a lack of variation, and a consequent decrease in adaptability. This weakens the chances of survival under pressures such as climate change, competition from other species, or new diseases. Large populations are more likely to survive pressures such as these, as such populations are more likely to harbor individuals that have genetic variants that are adaptive under new stresses. Small populations are much less...

Many proteins’ biological role depends on their interactions with their ligands, small molecules that bind to specific locations on the protein known as ligand-binding sites. Ligand-binding sites are often conserved among homologous proteins as these sites are critical for protein function.
Binding sites are often located in large pockets, and if their location on a protein’s surface is unknown, it can be predicted using various approaches. The energetic method computationally...

The divergence of a vector field at a point is the net outward flow of the flux out of a small volume through a closed surface enclosing the volume, as the volume tends to zero. More practically, divergence measures how much a vector field spreads out or diverges from a given point. For an outgoing flux, conventionally, the divergence is positive. The diverging point is often called the "source" of the field. Meanwhile, the negative divergence of a vector field at a point means that the vector...

The divergence and Stokes' theorems are a variation of Green's theorem in a higher dimension. They are also a generalization of the fundamental theorem of calculus. The divergence theorem and Stokes' theorem are in a way similar to each other; The divergence theorem relates to the dot product of a vector, while Stokes' theorem relates to the curl of a vector. Many applications in physics and engineering make use of the divergence and Stokes' theorems, enabling us to write...

The seminal work of Ohno in 1970 popularized the idea of gene duplication and divergence. DNA sequence comparison studies reveal that a large portion of the genes in bacteria, archaebacteria, and eukaryotes was  generated by gene duplication and divergence, indicating its critical role in evolution.
The duplicated copies of the gene are called Paralogs. Paralogs with similar sequences and functions form a gene family. Across several species, a large number of gene families are...