Category Archives: transcriptomics

An evolutionary cycle …

Posted on 15 Jan, 2016 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Rescan, Lenormand and Roze (2016) recently published new models on the evolution of life cycles in The American Naturalist. Most animals and protists have diploid life cycles in which the haploid stage is reduced to a single-celled gamete. Other organisms, such … Continue reading →

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Pre-adapted algal ancestors colonized land

Posted on 7 Dec, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

The colonization of land by plants 450 Mya marked a major transition on Earth and was one of the critical events that led to the emergence of extant terrestrial ecosystems. Chief among the challenges the terrestrial environment presented for these … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, Coevolution, evolution, genomics, haploid-diploid, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, plants, transcriptomics | Tagged | Leave a comment

The unforeseen genomic consequences of domestication

Posted on 26 Aug, 2015 by Rob Denton

When a desired genome is selected for propagation, all mutations, beneficial, neutral, or deleterious, shift in frequency, and this sometimes can have unforeseen consequences. Natural selection takes the good with the bad. Beneficial and harmful mutations combine to provide a net … Continue reading →

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The Butterfly Effect

Posted on 9 Jul, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

This might just take the prize for the ‘spiciest’ story in molecular co-evolution for 2015, yet. While a lot of the press coverage sounds like caterpillar thanksgiving, the science behind this study stands for the almost incredible power of molecular phylogenetics … Continue reading →

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

Understanding amphibian disease inside out

Posted on 1 Jul, 2015 by Rob Denton

In the spring of 2010, I was doing amphibian surveys among a few wetlands in Eastern Kentucky that were known for their excellent diversity. As I sauntered up to a familiar study site, I was greeted with an amphibian massacre. Hundreds of … Continue reading →

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Differential gene expression turns on salamander attack mode

Posted on 13 May, 2015 by Rob Denton

The transcriptomics field is boomin’. Approaches like RNA-seq have opened the flood gates to hundreds and hundreds of investigations that compare gene expression between biologically-interesting phenotypes, variants, species, etc. Plastic phenotypes have been a fascinating area of study for decades … Continue reading →

Posted in Molecular Ecology, the journal, transcriptomics | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Migration on the brain

Posted on 15 Apr, 2015 by Rob Denton

If you’ve watched any number of nature shows in your lifetime, you’ve seen the astounding migrations made by salmonid fishes. You can count on seeing a shot of salmon darting against the current and catapulting themselves over turbulent falls (like … Continue reading →

Posted in Molecular Ecology, the journal, natural history, RNAseq, transcriptomics | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Plastic and evolved responses to host fruit in apple maggot flies

Posted on 13 Apr, 2015 by Melissa DeBiasse

The apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, is a prominent system for the study of sympatric speciation. Sister taxa in the R. pomonella species complex, the apple-infesting race of R. pomonella and the snowberry-infesting R. zephyria, have sympatric distributions and the fruiting time of their preferred hosts widely overlaps. … Continue reading →

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