Author Archives: Alex Twyford

About Alex Twyford

Alex Twyford is a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and a Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. He studies the ecology and evolution of plants. Twitter @alex_twyford.

What next for DNA barcoding?

Posted on 25 July, 2019 by Alex Twyford

I’m a late adopter of DNA barcoding. As a botanist it has often felt that DNA barcoding wasn’t really for me. Unlike in animals, where the mitochondrial gene CO1 often tracks species boundaries, in plants, there is rarely an exact … Continue reading →

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Five years as a new PI

Posted on 5 July, 2019 by Alex Twyford

Life as a new Principal Investigator (PI) in science is full of surprises. On any given day you’ll be dealing with the past (finishing off manuscripts from your postdoc), present (helping current students) and anticipating the future (working on the … Continue reading →

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Earth BioGenome: The launch of biology’s moonshot

Posted on 7 December, 2018 by Alex Twyford

The Earth BioGenome Project aims to sequence all currently described ~1.5 million eukaryotic species on earth (Lewin et al., 2018; Figure 1). The scale and scope are enormous, and it is hard to imagine a more ambitious but exciting goal. … Continue reading →

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Evolution 2018: assortative mating, combinatorial speciation and genome dynamics

Posted on 24 August, 2018 by Alex Twyford

The Evolution conference in Montpellier is over, and as the sun, wine and great science become a memory, here is my recap of some conference highlights following on from a great first day: Sharon Strauss (University of California Davis) gave … Continue reading →

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Evolution 2018 Day 1: From genomics in the wild, to new models of selection

Posted on 19 August, 2018 by Alex Twyford

It’s Evolution conference time! Evolution has long been my favourite fixture in the conference calendar, with its diverse mix of theoretical and empirical studies that span the full range of evolutionary biology. This year it’s the second Joint Congress on … Continue reading →

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They joy of genome sequencing: when genomics meets natural history

Posted on 30 July, 2018 by Alex Twyford

When I have a massive pile of papers that I need to read, I can’t help but look at the ones with interesting natural history first. There’s something exceptionally satisfying about using modern tools to dig deeper into the features … Continue reading →

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Chromosomal inversions and the maintenance of species barriers

Posted on 29 May, 2018 by Alex Twyford

Chromosomal inversions have long fascinated evolutionary biologists for their role in adaptation and speciation. These structural variants are abundant in natural populations and can have diverse evolutionary consequences. They can cause reproductive isolation through hybrid sterility or protect sets of … Continue reading →

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DNA extraction for PacBio sequencing

Posted on 26 April, 2018 by Alex Twyford

PacBio is emerging as the favoured sequencing approach for assembling high-quality reference genomes. But the big issue with PacBio sequencing is that to get long sequence reads you need to start with high molecular weight DNA. For my first foray … Continue reading →

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Sequencing round-up 2018

Posted on 31 March, 2018 by Alex Twyford

The deluge of new sequencing approaches continues at a pace. It seems that you turn your back for five minutes and there’s a shiny new sequencing platform promising to deliver more for less. What is the current state of play … Continue reading →

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