Key Findings:

1. Chromosomal Fusion and Its Molecular Signature:

   • The fusion site is located at 2q13–2q14.1 and is characterized by degenerate telomeric sequences appearing interstitially, indicating the historical head-to-head joining of ancestral chromosomes.
   • Despite being a signature of a past fusion event, these telomeric repeats are no longer functional and have undergone sequence degradation over time.

2. Extensive Duplications in the Surrounding Genomic Region:

   • The study identifies large-scale segmental duplications flanking the fusion site, with several of these regions duplicated and scattered across multiple chromosomes.
   • These duplications are predominantly located in subtelomeric and pericentromeric regions, suggesting their role in genomic instability and chromosomal evolution.

3. Paralogous Regions and Their Evolutionary Relationships:

   • A 168-kilobase (kb) segment near the fusion site has 98%–99% sequence identity with three regions on chromosome 9 (9pter, 9p11.2, and 9q13).
   • Another 67-kb region distal to the fusion site shows a high degree of homology to sequences in chromosome 22qter.
   • Additionally, a 100-kb segment exhibits 96% sequence identity with a region in chromosome 2q11.2.

4. Comparative Genomics and Evolutionary Implications:

   • By comparing the duplicated sequences and their arrangement in primates, the researchers traced the order of duplication events leading to their present distribution.
   • The presence of specific repetitive elements within these duplicated segments serves as evolutionary markers that help infer their historical rearrangements.
   • Some of these duplicated regions are associated with chromosomal inversion breakpoints, potentially contributing to evolutionary changes in primates.
   • Recurrent structural rearrangements in these regions have been linked to human chromosomal disorders.

Conclusions and Implications:

• The findings provide valuable insights into the structural evolution of human chromosome 2, which played a crucial role in human speciation.
• Understanding these segmental duplications and their evolutionary trajectories sheds light on genomic instability, which may contribute to human genetic diseases.
• The study highlights how large-scale chromosomal rearrangements, such as fusion and duplication, have influenced the evolutionary divergence of humans from other primates.

This research advances our understanding of human genome evolution and offers a foundation for studying the effects of structural variants in genetic disorders.

You might learn a lot about that house—the rooms, the doors, the furniture—but you would miss the bigger story: the streets, the neighborhoods, and all the ways the city changes from one place to another.

Something similar happens when scientists study bacterial genomes one at a time.

Over the past decade, researchers have collected thousands of bacterial genomes. These genomes contain an enormous amount of information about how bacteria survive, adapt, and evolve. But comparing thousands of individual genomes can quickly become a computational maze.

That is where PANORAMA enters the story.

Developed by Jérôme Arnoux and colleagues, PANORAMA is a computational tool designed to explore bacterial pangenomes—the complete collection of genetic possibilities found across a species or group of related organisms. Instead of looking at every genome as an isolated object, the approach represents their shared and variable genetic features as a graph.

Think of this graph as a giant subway map.

Some stations appear on almost every route. These represent genes that are highly conserved. Other stations appear only on certain routes, representing genes that some bacteria possess while others do not. By looking at the entire network, scientists can begin to see not just *what genes exist*, but how they are organized and how biological systems are distributed across populations.

The researchers put PANORAMA to the test using 941 genomes of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium important in human health. They used the tool to investigate biological systems, including bacterial defense mechanisms against viruses known as bacteriophages. They then expanded the analysis to more than 6,000 genomes from four Enterobacteriaceae species.

The result is more than a faster way to process data.

PANORAMA allows researchers to ask a bigger question: What can an entire microbial species do, genetically speaking?

By comparing pangenomes, the researchers could identify systems shared between species as well as distinctive features. They could also find recurring genomic locations where genetic material is inserted—clues that may reveal common evolutionary processes.

And this is perhaps the most exciting part of the story.

Every bacterial genome is like a page in a huge evolutionary book. Until recently, reading thousands of those pages together was difficult. PANORAMA provides a way to turn those pages into a map, allowing scientists to see patterns that might disappear when each genome is studied separately.

The study, published in PLOS Computational Biology in July 2026, presents PANORAMA as a foundation for large-scale comparative pangenomics. The software and accompanying analysis resources are openly available, giving other researchers the opportunity to explore microbial diversity themselves.

So the story is not really about one bacterium or one genome.

It is about changing the way we look at life.

Instead of asking, “What is inside this genome?”, scientists can increasingly ask, “What is the full genetic landscape of this species—and how did it become this way?”

And sometimes, when you stop looking at one house and finally see the whole city, the most interesting discoveries are hiding in the streets between them.

Read more at https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013856

WALK- IN –INTERVIEWS

Eligible candidates may appear in Walk-in-Interview on May 23, 2014 at 10 AM for the posts of Research Associates & Senior Research Fellows (SRF) in the following DST/DBT/ICAR funded projects.

1 NPTC Project on Bioinformatics and Comparative Genomics

Research Associate (One)

Rs. 24000/- + 30% HRA for masters degree holder with more than 4 years experience

Essential: Ph D in Plant Molecular Biology & Biotechnology/Genetics 0r Candidates who have already submitted their Ph D thesis in above subjects

Desirable: Research experience in Genomics, Molecular biology, Microarrays analysis, Gene cloning, transgenic Techniques , and computational analysis.

Senior Research Fellow ( UGCCSIR/ DBT/ ICAR Net qualified only): (One)

Rs. 16000/- + 30% HRA and Rs. 18000+30 HRA from 3rd year onwards

Essential:

1. ICAR/ UGCCSIR/DBT Net qualified only

2. M. Sc. (with thesis) in Biotechnology, Life Sciences, Biosciences/ Bioinformatics, Genetics/ Plant Pathology with experience in molecular biology.

Or M.Sc with more than 3 years research experiences

3. B.Sc. Agriculture or Biology

Desirable:
1. M. Sc. with thesis
2. Experience in molecular biology, plant tissue culture
3. Bioinformatics knowledge is important

2 DST JC Bose National Fellowship

Research Associate (Bioinformatics) : One

Rs.22000/- + 30% HRA for 1 & 2nd Yr., Rs. 23000+ 30% HRA for 3rd year and Rs. 24000+30% HRA for 4th &5th yr

Essential: M Ph D in Plant Molecular Biology & Biotechnology/Genetics

Desirable: Research experience in Genomics, Molecular biology, Microarrays analysis, Gene cloning, transgenic Techniques , and computational analysis.

Age limit: Max.35 years (Age relaxation of 5 years for SC/ST & women and 3 years for OBC)

The posts are purely temporary in nature and are co-terminus with the project. Initially the offer will be made for one year only and may be further extendable based on performance of the candidate. The interview will be held on May 23 , 2014 at 10:00 AM at NRCPB, LBS Building, Pusa Campus, IARI, New Delhi- 110012. The candidates must bring four copies of biodata (in the prescribed proforma), original certificates, attested photocopies of each of the certificates and an attested copy of recent passport size photograph. No. TA/DA would be given for the appearance in interview. Only the candidates having essential qualification would be entertained for the interviews. Short-listing of candidates based on academic merit and experience will be done in case of large number of applicants.

Advertisement: http://www.nrcpb.org/sites/default/files/Advertisement%20for%20RA%20and%20SRF%20Position.pdf

A recent study by Webster and Chapman introduces Buscogeny (https://github.com/Jwebster89/Buscogeny), an open-source bioinformatics pipeline designed to make this process easier. The tool uses BUSCO (Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs), which identifies conserved genes that are expected to occur as single copies in particular groups of organisms. These genes act like evolutionary landmarks, allowing researchers to compare genomes and investigate their relationships.

Buscogeny brings several steps of phylogenomic analysis into one workflow. It identifies BUSCO genes, extracts and aligns their sequences, removes unreliable regions, combines information from multiple genes, and uses the resulting data to construct a phylogenetic tree. It also provides quality-control information, helping researchers identify genomes that may be too incomplete for reliable analysis.

The authors demonstrate the usefulness of Buscogeny with bacterial and fungal genomes, including Alternaria. This is particularly valuable because fungal genomes can vary greatly in quality and annotation. Ultimately, Buscogeny helps transform massive amounts of genomic data into an understandable evolutionary story. Each DNA sequence becomes a clue, each conserved gene becomes a landmark, and together these clues reveal a picture of how life is connected.

More at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10123-025-00752-6?

C. Titus Brown http://video.open-bio.org/video/1/a-history-of-bioinformatics-in-the-year-2039

http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/bioinformatics/overview.html?Fsize=0%2C%20%40%2F%27

Kelso Group
Department of Evolutionary Genetics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
Germany
Phone: +49 341 3550 500

Job:
http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/bioinformatics/jobs.html?Fsize=0%2C%2B%40

Address of the bookmark: http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150707/srep11996/full/srep11996.html

Tasks:  239 total,   1 running,  238 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie

This line tells you how many processes are running. If you are using laptops machines it’s not so interesting because you really are the only one using this machine.

Cpu(s):  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st

This line contains the CPU load. The first two numbers are how busy the system is doing computation (“us” stands for “user”) and how busy the system is doing system-y things like accessing disks or network (“sy” stands for “system”). We’ll talk more about this later.

Mem:   49457320k total,    3492174k used,  14535596k free,    1435148k buffers

This should be easy to understand – how much memory you’re using!

Swap:   539356k total,   28332k used,   836562k free,    29862014k cached

Swap is just on-disk memory that can be used to “swap” out programs from main memory. Again, we’ll talk about this later.:

PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
  1 root      39   19  0  0  0 S  0.0  0.0   246:57.22 kipmi0
  2 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0

And... finally! What’s actually running! The two most important numbers are the %CPU and %MEM towards the right, as well as the COMMAND. This tells you how compute- and memory-intensive your program is. Right now, nothing’s running so the numbers aren’t very interesting, but just wait until we run something...