Category Archives: genomics

“Through endurance we conquer.”* Are humans really the only ones who can make it across Drake’s Passage?

Sabrina Heiser wrote this post as a project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Sabrina grew up in Germany, completed a BSc (Hons) in Marine Biology at Plymouth University (UK) and then lived in … Continue reading

Posted in blogging, DNA barcoding, ecology, evolution, genomics, haploid-diploid | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

"It takes all the sequencing you can do, just to keep up with coevolution"

One of the most fundamental observations of evolution is that it never seems to stop. This is particularly true in host-pathogen coevolution, in which each species must adapt in response to the other. This constant evolution is the process biologists … Continue reading

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Symbiotic organs shaped by distinct modes of genome evolution in cephalopods

Last week I was whining about gaps in our understanding of evolutionary processes in the ocean. The universe heard me, and today I am satisfied to write about the published genome of Euprymna scolopes – the Hawaiian bobtail squid and … Continue reading

Posted in Coevolution, evolution, genomics, microbiology, next generation sequencing, Symbiosis | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Earth BioGenome: The launch of biology’s moonshot

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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How island foxes are living on the edge

Back in 2016, Robinson et al. (2016) published a genomic analyses of the Channel Island foxes and they showed that despite extremely low genome-wide diversity, the island foxes do not seem to be suffering from inbreeding depression. Read the post … Continue reading

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In it to win it: Selective Advantage through Host-Selected Mutations

Julian Jackson wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Julian is a MS student and investigates symbiotic relationships in microbial communities in Dr. Jeff Morris‘ lab. Outside of the … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, microbiology, Science Communication, selection | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Cricket Plays a Song of Systems Biology

Mina Momeni wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Mina earned her MS degree and is now a research technician at UAB in Dr. Nicole Riddle‘s lab. … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, blogging, evolution, genomics, mutation, natural history, Science Communication | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Microbiomes of a small conference

The conference season is almost over. There are still a few gems out there worth attending before school starts. I just came back from the Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomics Conference which took place at a UCLA resort in the mountains. … Continue reading

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A Master Manipulator: How a bacterium tells a plant what to do

Katrina Sahawneh wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Katrina is working on her MS in Biology and her MA in Education. She currently is studying ER stress … Continue reading

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Evolution 2018: assortative mating, combinatorial speciation and genome dynamics

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

Posted in adaptation, conferences, evolution, genomics, natural history, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, population genetics, speciation | Tagged , | Leave a comment