BOL: Related items

Edwards Lab

Sun, 10 Nov 2013 15:07:08 -0600

We study the evolutionary biology of birds and relatives, combining field, museum and genomics approaches to understand the basis of avian diversity, evolution and behavior. Our guiding approaches include population genetics, which provides a quantitative framework for studying speciation, geographic variation and genome evolution; systematics, which acknowledges that the focal species of any study has relatives that are behaviorally and ecologically no less interesting; and natural history, which gives meaning to the genes and genomic patterns we study.

Lab page: http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/edwards/index.html

Liberles Research Group

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 03:39:53 -0500

The Liberles Research Group works in the areas of computational comparative genomics, and molecular evolution. The central theme in the research group is the detection and characterization of the lineage-specific divergence of protein-encoding genes. Much of the work in the group is done in a phylogenetic context. Ultimately, we want to ask the question, “What makes each species unique at the genomic level?” and “what are the processes driving the functional divergence of genomes?”.

More at https://sites.temple.edu/liberles/

Computational Genomics Research Lab

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 03:22:38 -0500

The lab is located at the Data Science and AI division, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. We are also affiliated with Science for Life Laboratory, SciLifeLab.

Our Research: Our lab conduct research at the cutting edge of computational biology and bioinformatics. We aim to understand human genome variation and evolution across different genomic regions by developing interpretable and efficient methods in comparative pan-genomics, leveraging machine learning methods and statistical analysis.

More at https://cgrlab.github.io/

Bioinformatics and Sequencing Courses and Workshops

Rahul Agarwal — Sat, 24 Aug 2013 16:41:26 -0500

Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) organises lots of bioinformatics courses covering wide range of topics:

http://www.isb-sib.ch/education/training-courses.html

Canadian bioinformatics also organises various bioinformatics and sequencing courses:

http://bioinformatics.ca/workshops

In addition to above two, EMBI Europe, EMBO Europe, Cold Spring Harbour USA, Wellcome Trust UK and NOVA Europe also organise bioinformatics and sequencing courses annually:

http://www.embl.de/training/events/index.php?p_outstation=ALL

http://www.embo.org/funding-awards/courses-workshops

http://meetings.cshl.edu/courses.html

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Education-resources/Courses-and-conferences/Advanced-Courses-and-Scientific-Conferences/Advanced-Courses/index.htm

http://www.nova-university.org/pagetop.cfm?MenySidorTop_id=2&open=7

SocBiN Bioinformatics 2014

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 18:50:20 -0500

14th annual conference in Bioinformatics

Date : June 10-13

Organizers: The Society for Bioinformatics in Northern European countries (SocBiN) and the Norwegian Bioinformatics Platform / ELIXIR.NO

Venue: Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway

Topics:
Tools and technologies for integrative bioinformatics
Metagenomics
Comparative genomics and phylogeny
Post-ENCODE bioinformatics
Gene regulation
Cancer genomes
Marine genomics

Key Bioinformatics Scientists

Rahul Agarwal — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 13:37:07 -0500

Address of the bookmark: http://www.iscb.org/iscb-leadership-a-staff-/officers-and-board-directors

Bioinformatics infrastructure speed up Indian agriculture

Rahul Agarwal — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 12:44:44 -0600

"Realizing the paradigm shift it can bring about, the government is focusing on increased bioinformatics intervention in agri-sciences. Currently under process, the national grid on bioinformatics is expected make much better sense out of huge genomic" -

http://www.biospectrumindia.com/biospecindia/features/203849/supercomputing-indian-agriculture-fast-track-mode/page/1

Oldest Hominin DNA Sequenced

Surajeet — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 19:58:31 -0600

Matthias Meyer and his team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have developed new techniques for retrieving and sequencing highly degraded ancient DNA. They then joined forces with Juan-Luis Arsuaga and applied the new techniques to a cave bear from the Sima de los Huesos site. After this success, the researchers sampled two grams of bone powder from a hominin thigh bone from the cave. They extracted its DNA and sequenced the genome of the mitochondria or mtDNA, a small part of the genome that is passed down along the maternal line and occurs in many copies per cell. The researchers then compared this ancient mitochondrial DNA with Neandertals, Denisovans, present-day humans, and apes.

From the missing mutations in the old DNA sequences the researchers calculated that the Sima hominin lived about 400,000 years ago. They also found that it shared a common ancestor with the Denisovans, an extinct archaic group from Asia related to the Neandertals, about 700,000 years ago. "The fact that the mtDNA of the Sima de los Huesos hominin shares a common ancestor with Denisovan rather than Neandertal mtDNAs is unexpected since its skeletal remains carry Neandertal-derived features," says Matthias Meyer. Considering their age and Neandertal-like features, the Sima hominins were likely related to the population ancestral to both Neandertals and Denisovans. Another possibility is that gene flow from yet another group of hominins brought the Denisova-like mtDNA into the Sima hominins or their ancestors.

Reference

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131204132018.htm

C-DAC launch supercomputing facility "Param Bio Blaze" !!!

Rahul Nayak — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 11:55:14 -0600

The bioinformatics centre at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) completed 10 years, this month. Established in 2004, the centre has been widely used by numerous researchers across the globe and has an ultimate aim of making personalised drugs depending on the composition of a human body.

When biological data is processed using computer science, statistics, mathematics and engineering, it constitutes bioinformatics. The technological advancements are bringing new dimensions to the understanding of molecular basis of living organisms. There is immense data generated due to computing, but storage and analysis of this data is becoming a challenge, therefore there is an urgent need of supercomputers.

The C-DAC will launch Param Bio Blaze, a supercomputing facility, to address the challenges in bioinformatics on Tuesday at a three-day symposium, titled: 'Accelerating biology: Computing life'. The supercomputing facility will be inaugurated on Tuesday by Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, vice-chancellor, Central University of Hyderabad at the Yashada. The new C-DAC's facility will have a capacity of 10 teraflop and will be able to analyse human cells and its functions.

Param Bio Blaze will help have a larger storage space and better computing facility for the bioinformatics sector. The facility will help capture the movement of molecules and also interaction between two molecules and the effects.

Applications of Param BioBlaze

- Collaboration with National Centre for Cell Science for research on Malaria and understanding how the disease spreads

- Collaborative work with Tata Memorial hospital on breast cancer and find out the difference between normal tissues and tissues from breast cancer patients

- Designing anti-cancer molecules, a collaborative research with the University of Pune

Reference:

Times of India

Image:datacenterjournal.com

Atlas of ancient inter-ethnic group !!!

Jit — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 13:16:20 -0600

Now a dayz, almost 3% of the world's population lived outside their country of origin. These migration is increasingly being perceived as a force that can contribute to development, and an integral aspect of the global development process. While migrants make important contributions to the economic prosperity of their host countries, the flow of financial, technological, social and human capital back to their countries of origin also is having a significant impact on poverty reduction and economic development.

However, the ancient invasions and migrations to slavery and trade, history is embroidered with events that led to interactions between previously separate populations. Early humans migrated due to many factors such as changing climate and landscape and inadequate food supply. Historical migration of human populations begins with the movement of Homo erectus out of Africa across Eurasia about a million years ago. Homo sapiens appear to have occupied all of Africa about 150,000 years ago, moved out of Africa 70,000 years ago, and had spread across Australia, Asia and Europe by 40,000 years BC. Indo-Aryan migration from the Indus Valley to the plain of the River Ganges in Northern India is presumed to have taken place in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, contemporary to the Late Harappan phase in India (ca. 1700 to 1300 BC). From 180 BC, a series of invasions from Central Asia followed, including those led by the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, Indo-Parthians and Kushans in the northwestern Indian subcontinent.

Using the recent advance technologies researchers have created a historical atlas of instances of such mixing. They use a sophisticated statistical method for making inferences about human history and infer populations interbredings ( happen over the past 4,000 years) with an ease.

The study published the findings and presented with an interactive map. http://admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com/

These sort of genomic study have some limilation. It is hard to precisely define sources of mixing when it occurred between genetically similar groups, and scenarios involving multiple waves of mixing over time or between multiple groups can be difficult to tease apart. But it is believed that larger sample sizes will improve resolution. These high resolution will provide a deeper understanding of human history.

Reference:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/01/28/science.1245938

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21390129?dopt=Abstract&holding=npg

http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/paper-ethnicity.html

Image: Wikipedia