Life and health

Dolf Weijers

Dolf Weijers is a Dutch plant developmental biologist and Professor of Biochemistry at Wageningen University, known for research on the plant hormone auxin and plant embryo development.

Dolichol is an alpha-saturated polyisoprenoid alcohol lipid (14-24 isoprene units in humans) whose phosphorylated form carries sugars for N-linked glycosylation; defects in its synthesis cause congenital disorders of glycosylation.

Dolichol kinase

Dolichol kinase (DOLK, DK1, EC 2.7.1.108) is a CTP-dependent ER membrane enzyme making dolichol phosphate, the lipid carrier for N-glycosylation; yeast gene SEC59; mutations cause DOLK-CDG with dilated cardiomyopathy.

Dolichol-pathway glycosyltransferases

Dolichol-pathway glycosyltransferases are membrane-bound ER enzymes, encoded by ALG genes, that stepwise build the 14-sugar oligosaccharide Glc3Man9GlcNAc2 on dolichol before its transfer to proteins; defects cause congenital disorders of glycosylation.

Dolichonyx

Dolichonyx is a genus of New World songbirds in the blackbird family, erected by William Swainson in 1827 and containing a single species, the Bobolink.

Dolichopodidae

Dolichopodidae, the long-legged flies, is the fourth largest dipteran family of predatory flies in Empidoidea, defined by epipharyngeal armature and green metallic coloration; many subfamilies are paraphyletic, and adults prey on aphids and other small insects.

Dolichos

Dolichos L. is a conserved legume genus (Fabaceae, Phaseoleae, Phaseolinae) of about 55-60 Old World tropical species, mostly African; distinguished from Macrotyloma by short standard appendages, reticulate pollen and purple flowers; hyacinth bean (D. lablab) now Lablab purpureus.

Dolichotis

Dolichotis, commonly known as maras, is a genus of large, long-legged, cursorial rodents in the cavy family Caviidae, native to southern South America. It contains the Patagonian mara and, in some classifications, the Chacoan mara.

Dolichovespula arenaria

Dolichovespula arenaria, known as the aerial yellowjacket, is a common North American eusocial wasp that builds its paper nests above ground in trees and shrubs.

Dolichovespula maculata

Dolichovespula maculata, the baldfaced hornet or bald-faced aerial yellowjacket (synonym Vespula maculata), is a black-and-white North American social wasp that builds large aerial paper nests and is not a true hornet.

Dolichovespula saxonica

Dolichovespula saxonica, the Saxon wasp, is a Palaearctic eusocial vespine wasp (11–18 mm) lacking the red tergite spots of D. norwegica; it colonized Britain from 1987 and nests aerially in colonies up to about 1,800.

Doliolida

Doliolida (doliolids) are an order of pelagic tunicates in the class Thaliacea, barrel-shaped filter feeders with 5–9 muscle bands and the most complex, polymorphic life cycle among chordates, forming blooms that affect ocean carbon export.

Dolly (sheep)

Dolly (5 July 1996 – 14 February 2003) was a Finn Dorset ewe, the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, created by Ian Wilmut's team at the Roslin Institute via SCNT from a mammary gland cell; euthanized at six after JSRV lung tumors.

Dolomedes

Dolomedes (raft spiders, fishing spiders) is a genus of about 106 large semi-aquatic Dolomedidae spiders found worldwide except Antarctica, hunting fish and aquatic insects on the water surface; family status separated from Pisauridae in 2025.

Dolomedes tenebrosus

Dolomedes tenebrosus, the dark fishing spider, is a large Dolomedidae spider of eastern North America; unlike most fishing spiders it lives in wooded areas and homes, with females 15-26 mm, males dying during mating.

Dolomite as a mineral source

Dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2, CAS 16389-88-1) as a mineral source of calcium and magnesium: GRAS Notice 806 for bottled-water remineralization at 40 mg/L Ca and 25 mg/L Mg, versus supplement-grade dolomite with heavy-metal contamination concerns.

Dolomys

Dolomys Nehring, 1898 is an extinct European vole genus (Arvicolinae, Cricetidae) with rooted hypsodont molars, type species D. milleri from Beremend, Hungary; Pliocene to Pleistocene, once confused with Dinaromys and Pliomys.

Dolores R. Piperno

Dolores R. Piperno is an American archaeobotanist who founded phytolith analysis, showed the humid American tropics were centers of early plant domestication, and is a Smithsonian senior scientist emerita.

Dolph Schluter

Dolph Schluter, born Adolphe Schluter in 1955, is a Canadian evolutionary biologist at the University of British Columbia who established ecological speciation and studied adaptive radiation in threespine sticklebacks.

Dolphin

Dolphin: a marine mammal cetacean (Delphinidae and relatives), not a fish; breathes air via a blowhole, echolocates, whistles, and includes the orca; 32 species plus five river dolphins.

Domain (biology)

Domain (biology): the highest taxonomic rank, above kingdom, proposed by Woese, Kandler, and Wheelis in 1990 for Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucarya; now debated by two-domain phylogenomics placing eukaryotes within Asgard archaea.

Domain X

Domain X (IPR024937; Pfam PF01348 Intron_maturas2) is the conserved maturase domain of group II intron-encoded proteins, following an RT domain, promoting RNA splicing; plant MatK and MatR retain it while their RT and endonuclease domains are degenerate.

Sep 20, 2026

Domenico Accili

Domenico Accili is an Italian-born physician-scientist in endocrinology at Columbia University, known for identifying FOXO transcription factors in insulin action and showing that beta cell failure in diabetes proceeds by dedifferentiation.

Domenico Corrado

Domenico Corrado is an Italian cardiologist who leads the Clinica Cardiologica at the University of Padova, known for research showing Italy's athlete ECG screening cut sudden deaths by about 70%.

Domenico Praticò

Domenico Praticò is an Italian-born physician-scientist and pharmacologist, born in 1962, whose studies are credited as the first to delineate oxidative stress's role in Alzheimer's disease, and who directed the Alzheimer's Center at Temple University.

Domestic canary

Domestic canary (Serinus canaria), cage songbird from the wild Atlantic canary of the Canary Islands, Madeira, and Azores; domesticated within 500 years, yellow plumage by 1610-1677, bred for song, color, and type varieties.

Domestic duck

Domestic duck (Anas platyrhynchos domesticus; also Muscovy, Cairina moschata): poultry descended mainly from the mallard, domesticated in southern China. 1.15 billion kept in 2020, 89 percent in Asia; raised for meat, eggs, foie gras, and rice-paddy integration.

Domestic goose

Domestic goose, from Greylag (Anser anser) and Swan goose (Anser cygnoides), a poultry bird kept for meat, down, weed control, and guarding; fourth most produced poultry species, dominated by China.

Domestic mink

Domestic mink are American mink (Neogale vison) farmed for fur since the 1860s; semi-domesticated, cage-housed carnivores raised mainly in Europe, the US, and China, with contested welfare and disease concerns.