Category Archives: genomics

What does the island fox say?

Posted on 5 May, 2016 by Arun Sethuraman

Small populations are characterized by large drift and reduced efficacy of selection effects, which result in fixation of both advantageous and deleterious alleles, accumulation of homozygosity, and often reduction in population fitness. What with plummeting mammal populations across biota, understanding … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, mutation, natural history, population genetics, selection | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Disentangling the wolf-coyote admixture through an ancestry-based approach

Posted on 3 May, 2016 by Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

Large carnivores like bears and wolves still pose a puzzle for systematics and population genetics. The more data we get, the more complex their evolutionary history seems to be.

Posted in conservation, evolution, genomics, population genetics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Analysis of the human microbiome reveals you are (at least related to) what you eat, in a manner of speaking

Posted on 29 Apr, 2016 by Kelle Freel

Understanding microbial symbioses, and more specifically how the human microbiome affects our health, is currently a hot topic in the land of microbiology and metagenomics. The most recent special edition of Science focuses on reviews and articles centered on understanding … Continue reading →

Posted in genomics, medicine, microbiology, next generation sequencing, population genetics | Leave a comment

The slow, and sometimes incomplete, journey to diploidy

Posted on 27 Apr, 2016 by Rob Denton

Whether you are reading this as a plant, an animal, or fungus, it is likely that some ancestor of yours doubled up on genomes. However, it is likely that these extra genomes disappeared over evolutionary time. What gives? Where are those extra … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, genomics, quantitative genetics, speciation | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Sweeps and Demographic Inference

Posted on 25 Apr, 2016 by Arun Sethuraman

Population genetics presents us with numerous conundrums – several of which have to do with how the same genomic disposition can be “reached” over evolutionary time with multiple alternate demographic or selective processes. I have discussed several of these issues … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, population genetics, selection, theory | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

One of these things is not like the other……

Posted on 22 Apr, 2016 by Kelle Freel

While we know that bacteria are pretty scandalous with their DNA, not minding horizontal gene transfer (HGT) and such (which can be pretty confounding when trying to discuss species concepts), and although it’s clear that this kind of genetic material … Continue reading →

Posted in Coevolution, evolution, genomics, horizontal gene transfer | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Island-Hopping with an E.I.D.

Posted on 18 Apr, 2016 by Bryan McLean

If you live in the U.S. and feel like Zika virus is getting closer to home, that’s because it is. Although there are no known cases of Zika transmission by natural vectors in the lower 48, experts have stressed that … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, genomics, medicine, phylogenetics, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New branches on the tree of life

Posted on 12 Apr, 2016 by Kelle Freel

(Trees from Darwin (1837), Haeckel (1866), and Woese (1990)) We’ve come quite a long way since Darwin sketched out his tree in 1837 connecting, with branch tips representing animals and microbes currently in existence and branches and trunks their ancestors. … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, community ecology, evolution, genomics, metagenomics, microbiology, phylogenetics | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Results of the Molecular Ecologist's Survey on High-Throughput Sequencing

Posted on 11 Apr, 2016 by Elin Videvall

Some days ago, we asked our readers to fill in a survey (now closed) on your use of high-throughput sequencing techniques. We got a lot of responses, a total of 260 people filled in the form. Thank you! Here are the results of your answers. The … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, genomics, next generation sequencing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

hyRAD and museum genomics

Posted on 5 Apr, 2016 by Ethan Linck

While the RAPTURE may have arrived, the development of novel restriction digest-based library prepartation techniques — and portmanteaus — continues unabated. In a paper published in PLoS ONE last month (and previously available as a preprint on bioRxiv), Tomasz Suchan … Continue reading →

Posted in genomics, methods, natural history, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments