Category Archives: domestication

Revealing the natural history of yeast

The following is a guest post by Matthew Vandermeulen, PhD, at the University at Buffalo. Matthew studies the regulation of responses to environmental variation; he is on Twitter as @mvandermeulen. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, baker’s and brewer’s yeast, may be one organism that could contend with dogs … Continue reading

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Genomic windows into ancient climate change

The following is a guest post by Ornob Alam, a graduate student in Michael Purugganan’s lab at New York University. Ornob’s PhD projects examine the demographic and evolutionary history of domesticated Asian rice in the context of past climate change … Continue reading

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In defense of hatcheries: a response to the "Artifishal" documentary

A month or so ago, I had opportunity to screen the documentary, “Artifishal” (admittedly, a pretty clever title), in a room full of fish biologists, geneticists, and hatchery managers.  The premise of the film is that both hatcheries and open … Continue reading

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It's decorative gourd genetics season, muppet-huggers

It’s the first week of November, and we’re at Peak Pumpkin. Jack o’lanterns are passé, but Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and traditional winter-solstice-adjacent holidays will keep pumpkin pie and its infamous espresso-based brethren in style for almost two more months. … Continue reading

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Population genomics finds veritas in the demographic history of vino

One of the more, hah, fruitful applications of genomic data has been in crop and livestock improvement. Biologists know that domesticating plants and animals for human use has involved powerful artificial selection — usually inadvertent at first, then intensive and … Continue reading

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Non-model organisms are so hot right now

What makes a model organism? Well, as the name suggests, they are widely studied and have been adapted to a vast array of common genetic techniques. A few of the most often utilized organisms, which you are most likely already … Continue reading

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Mapping genomes and navigating behavior for wildlife conservation

Virginia Aida wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is currently evaluating a potential pharmacotherapy in traumatic brain injury and anticipates graduating with her MS in summer 2017.  Although she … Continue reading

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Molting on the molecular level: how blue crabs become soft-shell crabs

Megan Roegner wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Megan spent her early years in Cape Town, South Africa playing in the tidal pools along the coast and developing … Continue reading

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The not so singular process of hybridization

What, if anything, are hybrids? Zach Gompert and Alex Buerkle ask this question in a special issue in Evolutionary Applications. Hybrids occur when unrelated individuals mate, but how distant do the taxa need to be to constitute a cross? The varied … Continue reading

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To the final estuaries

For the final stop on our Japanese sampling leg, we ventured to the most populous metropolitan area in the world. Tokyo was known as Edo (江戸), or estuary, until it became the imperial capital in 1868. An apt location to end our field expedition … Continue reading

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