Category Archives: genomics

THREAT DOWN! Gene flow from polar bears into brown bears

What do you get when you cross a male polar bear with a female brown bear? Trick question: Nothing, because it doesn’t really happen!*

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Rescue me

Whiteley et al. (2015) review genetic rescue (GR), or the increase in population fitness (growth) owing to immigration of new alleles, in a new paper in TREE. Genetic rescue is a controversial and hasn’t been applied to any great extent … Continue reading

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Phonemes and Genomes

Human phonemes and genomes are thought to have evolved hand-in-glove out of Africa. Several recent studies have attempted to capture a picture of this global variation in languages and peoples, often supporting (and rejecting) a serial founder model (eg. see … Continue reading

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Night at the museum

Many population genetic and genomic studies document snapshots of a given population’s genetic diversity. Yet, there are many reasons to document changes over time in population parameters in response to perturbations, such as biological invasions (both in terms of the invader … Continue reading

Posted in DNA barcoding, evolution, genomics, natural history, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, population genetics, speciation, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

From crocodiles to coconuts

The first plant trypanosomatids were discovered in plant tissues over 100 years ago, but we know very little about their biology, life cycle or how they have adapted to life inside plants. Jaskowska et al. (2015) provide a review of … Continue reading

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Discordance in ancestry inference using human mtDNA and autosomes

Mitochondrial haplotypes have been used extensively over the last few decades for inference of a population structure in humans. Key findings from these studies include what has come to be known as the “Mitochondrial Eve” hypothesis (see the controversial Cann, … Continue reading

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New to the genome sequencing $8 menu: Nextera library preps!

Researchers are thrifty. We’re always looking for ways to make our expensive supplies and reagents go the extra mile. This shit has been going on for decades – hell, probably even centuries: I remember when I was a kid and … Continue reading

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A current review of modern and ancient eDNA

There is something romantic about environmental DNA. The ability to discover the presence of almost any species just by detecting the microscopic bread crumbs they leave behind? That is really just a deerstalker and pipette away from Sherlock-level science. But if … Continue reading

Posted in DNA barcoding, genomics, metagenomics, Paleogenomics | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Linking gene expression and phenotype in an emerging model organism

Last week in his post “Transcriptomics in the wild (populations),” TME contributor Noah Snyder-Mackler focused on a recent paper by Alvarez et al. that reviews the last decade of transcriptomic research including the goal of linking gene expression and phenotype. Researchers today routinely collect transcriptomic data for non-model … Continue reading

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Recent Ancestry of the USA and the 100k Genome Project

Holiday presents for pop-gen enthusiasts come in the form of data – boatloads of it! The past two weeks saw the announcements of two neat studies that spell monumental steps toward our understanding of the genetics of mixed populations. With … Continue reading

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