In work lead by Dr Karen Siu Ting she addresses an important question in phylogenomics using 18 amphibian species. She chose to work on this Lissamphibian group because there is significant conflict over their relationships to one another, and because transcriptomes are increasingly being used to overcome the lack of genomic data for this clade.…
In the May issue of MBE we have published the outcome of a collaboration with Dr Marc Tollis, Prof Carlo Maley, Prof Per Palsbol and others where we sequenced and analysed the genome of the humpback whale. The paper aimed to Peto’s Paradox – where large-bodied and long-lived animals do not suffer higher risks of…
In this paper in MBE we examined the selective pressure variation across genomically imprinted genes in the inbreeding species Arabidopsis thaliana. Genomic imprinting is an epigenetic phenomenon where autosomal genes display uniparental expression depending on whether they are maternally or paternally inherited. Genomic imprinting can arise from parental conflicts over resource allocation to the offspring, which…
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 the 1st of August Ann had her PhD viva and did a wonderful job of bringing her hard work to life for her panel of examiners. Ann’s PhD was primarily computational, involving sequence similarity network analysis of primate genomes, the identification of gene fusions, and the analysis of their transcription and translation profiles using…
We are very excited and proud to announce that Ray has successfully defended his PhD on Friday 11th August 2017. Dr Ray Moran graduated from DCU on the 2nd November 2017. Here is a photo of our very proud looking and newest Doctor !;-)
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…