In a recent collaboration with Joe Cockburn et al published in Structure – we reveal the structure of the cargo binding TPR domain of kinesin light chain bound to the cargo molecule JIP3. Along with solving the crystal structure – the biophysical and evolutionary analysis we carried out have revealed the kinesin-1 cargo binding site…
I am looking for two highly motivated computational evolutionary biologists with excellent programming and computing skills to join my team at the University of Nottingham. Both positions are fully funded for two years with an option to extend pending grant success. Both positions are computational in nature and require strong programming, molecular evolution and genome…
On May 21st 2017 I was officially elected as Fellow of the Linnean Society. I am very excited to receive this honour and look forward to the ceremony. “Founded in 1788, the Society takes its name from the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus… It is the oldest active biological society… As it moves into its third…
Our latest article we discuss some recent work from Thijis Ettema’s group on discovery of a new member of the Asgard group of Archaea. The Asgard “superphylum” is a group of archaea that provide us with important information about the origin of eukaryotes. The image from our news and views article shown here summarises the relationship between Bacteria…
Save the date: 21st June for the launch of Leeds Omics. You are invited to the launch of Leeds Omics on Tuesday morning (21st June) at 10.00am. Please register for this event using the following link: http://leedsomicslaunch.eventbrite.co.uk Leeds Omics is a cross faculty initiative between the Faculty of Biological Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine…
Dr O’Connell has been invited to the board of associate editors for Genome Biology and Evolution (GBE). GBE is an Oxford University Press journal owned by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, and is in the top ten evolutionary biology journals internationally and has an impact factor of 4.2. “I feel honoured to have been…
More support for Atlantogenata. This week an international collaborative effort has tackled a major challenge in phylogenetics – the interrelationships amongst placental mammals. The paper has just been published in Genome Biology and Evolution (please click here to see the paper). In work led by Dr James Tarver and Dr Davide Pisani (with contributions from…
In our latest work on the origin of eukaryotes published in a special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (link to full issue) compiled and edited by Professor Martin Embley and Dr Tom Williams, we advocate a ‘domain-free’ view of the history of life. Debates about whether there should be two domains…
So I took to the stage to talk about evolution and mass extinction for the TEDx DCU event in 2015. It was pitched for the general audience and was really good fun. It is a real challenge to get these concepts across and not bore people to death ! I am not sure I have…
