Category Archives: horizontal gene transfer

Recent reading: 29 April 2022

Posted on 29 Apr, 2022 by Jeremy Yoder

How is this month already almost over? Four weeks ago I was just starting to realize that an unexpected, astonishingly good flowering season for Joshua trees meant I needed to shoehorn in some fieldwork, eyeing the data analysis I needed … Continue reading →

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Star Trek Discovery made a debunked genome sequence into a plot point — but that’s not nearly the worst biology goof in the franchise

Posted on 22 Oct, 2017 by Jeremy Yoder

Anyone who’s been anywhere near my Twitter feed in the last month knows I’m pretty darned happy with Star Trek: Discovery, the latest iteration of the five-decade-old science fiction franchise. Discovery manages to build something new with the key elements … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, genomics, horizontal gene transfer | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Diving into chilly California waters, understanding genomic differentiation and the role of gene transfer in marine cyanophages

Posted on 23 Nov, 2016 by Kelle Freel

At this point, it’s clear: microbes are everywhere, there are a lot of them, and they are important. In fact, they are more abundant, more diverse and older than any other organism we have on this planet. In particular, cyanobacteria … Continue reading →

Posted in Coevolution, evolution, genomics, horizontal gene transfer, microbiology, population genetics | 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 →

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Supergenes and Sparrows with Four Sexes

Posted on 10 Feb, 2016 by Ethan Linck

Supergenes are groups of tightly-linked genes that influence suites of traits relevant to fitness. While long a fixture of evolutionary genetics theory, their role in empirical studies of non-model organisms has been relatively limited, due to limitations in both our … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, horizontal gene transfer, natural history, population genetics, selection | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

A race to the bottom with a new card from the coevolutionary deck

Posted on 29 Jan, 2016 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

I’m a sucker for a clever, amusing title, though I’ve recently read that amusing titles are cited less (see here). Alas, maybe a well placed metaphor can enliven a manuscript and also not get lost in a citation-less abyss? In basic … Continue reading →

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Where's your wine from?

Posted on 20 Aug, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Human-mediated selection of yeast cultures has played a huge role in the development of numerous unique strains of Sacchromyces cerevisiae, often attributed to production of a wide variety of wines the world over. Previous studies have indicated a single domesticated … Continue reading →

Posted in domestication, evolution, genomics, horizontal gene transfer, microbiology, Molecular Ecology, the journal, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics, STRUCTURE, yeast | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

To sequence a genome or not to sequence a genome, that is the question

Posted on 16 Mar, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

In a paper out last month in the Journal of Phycology, Bhattacharya et al. (2015) provide a perspective on the need for more algal genomes. [A] relevant question on the minds of many phycologists might be: do we really need more algal … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, horizontal gene transfer, mutation, next generation sequencing, selection | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Et tu, Brute? Black-legged ticks use genes co-opted from bacteria to fight bacterial infection

Posted on 8 Dec, 2014 by Melissa DeBiasse

Horizontal gene transfer occurs when genes are passed between individuals by mechanisms other than reproduction. It is common in bacteria and occasionally happens between highly divergent groups (for example, monocot genes transferred to eudicots, fungal genes transferred to aphids, bacterial genes transferred … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, genomics, horizontal gene transfer, microbiology | Leave a comment