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Category Archives: methods
An Update on the Great BAMM Controversy
Update, 01 August 2016, 2:50PM. This post has been updated to include information contained in the supplemental material of Rabosky et al. 2017, and clarify the difference between branch-specific and tree-wide rate variation. Back in August, I summarized the main … Continue reading
Posted in blogging, evolution, methods, phylogenetics, science publishing, software, speciation
Tagged BAMM, diversification, extinction, macroevolution
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Unbalanced population sampling and STRUCTURE
The utility and intuition offered by the program STRUCTURE, and more generally, the ‘admixture’ model of Pritchard et al. (2000) are unquestioned – with tens of thousands of citations, it retains its lead among the most popular population genetics software. … Continue reading
Posted in bioinformatics, genomics, howto, methods, population genetics, software, STRUCTURE
Tagged gene flow, methods, population structure
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The road ahead
It’s been almost two weeks since we woke up to the reality that Donald Trump — the failed casino mogul, the virtuoso tax-dodger, the reality-show star, the self-described serial sexual assailant, the Ku Klux Klan endorsee and darling of white … Continue reading
Posted in citizen science, community, funding, NIH, NSF, politics, United States
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Divergence and Linked Background Selection
We have widely discussed the reduction in neutral diversity due to demography and linked selection effects (e.g. selective sweeps and hitchhiking, or background selection) in several previous posts (e.g see here, here, and here). However, how linked selection affects neutral divergence … Continue reading
Posted in evolution, genomics, methods, selection, speciation, theory
Tagged ecological speciation, Evolution, genomics, Homo sapiens, natural selection, population genetics
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The almighty CRISPR-Cas9 technology: The future of conservation?
In the first post on CRISPR-Cas9, I’ve explained how bacteria and archaea create a “database” of infections and use it as a form of prokaryotic immunization. This time, I’m going to concentrate on how biotechnology turns this natural phenomenon into … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, evolution, methods, theory
Tagged conservation, CRISPR, CRISPR-Cas9, gene drive
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The almighty CRISPR-Cas9 technology: How does it work?
CRISPR-Cas9 took the whole world of biology by storm. Selected Science’s 2015 Breakthrough of the Year, the CRISPR-Cas9 technology is revolutionizing science. Within five years of the official announcement (Jinek et al. 2012), it became the genome-editing technique of choice. … Continue reading
Posted in evolution, genomics, methods, theory
Tagged CRISPR, CRISPR-Cas9, genome-editing, genome-engineering
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On (mis)interpreting STRUCTURE/ADMIXTURE results
STRUCTURE, ADMIXTURE and other similar software are among the most cited programs in modern population genomics. They are algorithms that estimate allele frequencies and admixture proportions under the premise that sampled genotypes are derived from one of “K” ancestral populations, … Continue reading