Category Archives: transcriptomics

Serendipitous history in the microbial making

It’s been over 100 years since the Dutch Microbiologist Martinus Willem Beijerinck theorized that microbes could oxidize manganese to generate energy for growth. Last week, the first evidence for this theory was published, and you might be surprised about from … Continue reading

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Asteroids and Pandemics

For whatever reason, viral disease and pandemics have been on my mind, so it’s no surprise that a recent paper in Molecular Ecology caught my attention. It blends the existential dread of global pandemics with the increasing panic concerning the … Continue reading

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FISHing for molecules, a link between form and function in animal–bacteria symbioses

I am posting a blog post that was written by Benedikt Geier, a Ph.D. candidate who just handed in his Ph.D. thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany. In my eyes, these last couple of … Continue reading

Posted in Coevolution, community ecology, ecology, evolution, genomics, methods, microbiology, natural history, Symbiosis, transcriptomics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The world through the senses of a pangolin

This Saturday, February 15, is World Pangolin Day, and thus it is a good time to do some PR for these fascinating animals. Continue reading

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One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes and Not a Single to Spare

What is the weight of a transcriptome? How about a thousand? Every day new sequencing machines are purring away, base pair by base pair, producing novel insights into the genomes of our favorite organisms. As technology improves, costs come down, and opportunities … Continue reading

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Conference catch-up: The many colors of snow

Red snow … watermelon snow … green snow … did you know that snow came in so many different colors? I had never heard of watermelon ice (#🍉❄) until a talk given by Robin Kodner from Western Washington University at … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, citizen science, community ecology, evolution, fieldwork, mating system, microbiology, natural history, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics, selection, speciation, transcriptomics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Racing Against the Climate

Sarah Livett wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Introduction to Evolutionary Processes course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Sarah was a 5th year MS student at UAB in Dr. Thane Wibbel‘s lab. She worked … Continue reading

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Transcriptome sequencing catches bats' immune systems napping

Populations of multiple North American bat species have been more than decimated by white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that spreads within roosting colonies and becomes deadly during hibernation. A paper just released online early at Molecular Ecology adds support to a hypothesis … Continue reading

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They joy of genome sequencing: when genomics meets natural history

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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Found in translation: The evolutionary history of RNA viruses in vertebrates

I have to admit, viruses aren’t normally my thing, but this is pretty darn cool. In a study out by Shi and colleagues this week, researchers identified 214 new viruses that, as the authors so succinctly state, reveal “diverse virus-host … Continue reading

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