The fellowship will be for a period of 3 years, or for a period of 4 years, with 25 % compulsory work (e.g. teaching responsibilities at the department) contingent on the qualifications of the candidate and the teaching needs of the department.

Starting date no later than October 1, 2021.

More at https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/199984/phd-research-fellow-in-genomics-and-bioinformatics

Your tasks will consist of:

Advanced bioinformatics analyses within research projects across Sweden, including key involvement in a major research effort in conifer genomics.
Development of bioinformatics tools and workflows.
Educating other scientists in bioinformatics through collaboration within supported projects, teaching at national courses, and through participating in various networks.
Taking part in the continuous development of NBIS/SciLifeLab at a national level

More at https://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/join-us/details/?positionId=518909

In this post, we’ll explore the core methods used in comparative genomics, the questions they help answer, and how they’re shaping our understanding of life.

1. Whole-Genome Alignment
Whole-genome alignment involves mapping the entire genome of one species to another. Tools like MUMmer, MAUVE, and LASTZ perform large-scale sequence alignments to detect conserved regions, rearrangements, insertions, and deletions.

Use Case:
Comparing human and chimpanzee genomes to identify evolutionary conserved sequences (ECS) and regions of divergence.

Key Challenges:
Handling repetitive sequences and genome rearrangements.

Computational complexity in large genomes.

2. Synteny and Collinearity Analysis
Synteny refers to conserved blocks of gene order across species. Tools like MCScanX, SynMap, or CHITRA (for visualizing synteny interactively) detect these blocks to understand chromosomal evolution.

Use Case:
Studying ancient genome duplications in plants.

Investigating chromosomal rearrangements in cancer genomes.

3. Ortholog and Paralog Detection
Orthologs are genes in different species that evolved from a common ancestor, while paralogs are genes duplicated within a genome. Identifying them is crucial for functional annotation and evolutionary studies.

Popular Tools:
OrthoFinder, Orthologous MAtrix (OMA), InParanoid, and EggNOG.

Use Case:
Functional prediction of uncharacterized genes based on orthologs in model organisms.

Tracing gene family evolution.

4. Phylogenomic Analysis
Phylogenomic methods combine phylogenetics and genomics to infer evolutionary trees based on genome-wide data. These methods can handle dozens to hundreds of genomes, using concatenated alignments or gene trees.

Tools:
RAxML, IQ-TREE, ASTRAL, Phylip, BEAST.

Use Case:
Resolving the evolutionary relationships between microbial species.

Studying speciation events.

5. Pan-Genome Analysis
The pan-genome consists of the core genome (shared by all strains) and the accessory genome (strain-specific genes). This is especially popular in microbial genomics.

Tools:
Roary, Panaroo, BPGA, PGAP.

Use Case:
Understanding virulence factor diversity in E. coli.

Designing broad-spectrum vaccines.

6. Comparative Transcriptomics
Comparing transcriptomes across species or conditions reveals conserved and unique expression patterns. RNA-seq data can be mapped to reference genomes to identify orthologous expression profiles.

Use Case:
Comparing stress response in extremophiles and model species.

Studying conserved regulatory networks.

7. Functional Element Comparison
Beyond genes, comparative genomics also targets non-coding regions—enhancers, promoters, miRNAs. Conservation across species often implies functional importance.

Tools:
PhastCons, GERP, phyloP (based on multiple alignments).

Use Case:
Detecting conserved non-coding elements in vertebrates.

Studying regulatory divergence in human evolution.

8. Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) Detection
In microbes, genes often jump across species boundaries. Comparative genomics can detect HGT by identifying genes that defy the expected phylogenetic pattern.

Tools:
HGTector, DarkHorse, AlienHunter, SIGI-HMM.

Use Case:
Tracing antibiotic resistance genes.

Exploring microbial adaptability in extreme environments.

Final Thoughts
Comparative genomics is a powerful lens to observe the diversity and unity of life. With a broad toolkit—from aligners to orthology pipelines, phylogenetic engines to visualization tools—it allows scientists to ask big questions: How did genomes evolve? What makes species unique? Where do new genes come from?

Whether you're studying extremophiles, building better crops, or exploring human ancestry, comparative genomics offers the methods to connect the dots across the tree of life.

To address the challenges of describing and estimating virodiversity, a team of investigators from Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) and EcoHealth Alliance began in jungles of Bangladesh - home to the flying fox.

Reference:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/mammals-harbour-at-least-320000-new-viruses/articleshow/22253268.cms

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23932400

Link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/two-surprises-in-dna-of-boy-found-buried-in-siberia.html?_r=0

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12736.html

“In humans and most vertebrates the duplication events were older so there are fewer duplicated genes still present. Most of the duplicated genes get lost or modified so much that they are no longer recognizable as duplicates over time. In the trout and salmon we can see an earlier stage in the process and many duplicated genes are still present,” said Dr Gary Thorgaard of Washington State University, a co-author of the paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

Source:

http://www.sci-news.com/genetics/science-genome-rainbow-trout-01877.html

Source:

http://news.ufl.edu/2014/04/28/real-time-genome-sequencing-at-sea/

miRNA Sequencing data analysis : http://tools.genxpro.net/omiras/

miRNApath( R based tool) :  http://www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/miRNApath.html

miRWalk DB : http://www.umm.uni-heidelberg.de/apps/zmf/mirwalk/

TargetScanHuman : http://www.targetscan.org/

RNAhybrid : http://bibiserv.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/rnahybrid/welcome.html

RNA22 predictor : http://cbcsrv.watson.ibm.com/rna22.html

miRNA predictor : http://www.microrna.org/microrna/home.do

Plant miRNA DB :http://bioinformatics.cau.edu.cn/PMRD/

miRBASE DB: http://www.mirbase.org/

Plant RNA predictor : http://plantgrn.noble.org/psRNATarget/

miRNA Interaction DB : http://starbase.sysu.edu.cn/

Sequencing based miRNA DB : http://mirgator.kobic.re.kr/

predicted A-to-I edited miRNA DB : http://microrna.osumc.edu/mireditar/

Animal, plant and virus miRNA DB : http://lemur.amu.edu.pl/share/php/mirnest/

Atlantic Salmon miRNAs DB : http://www.molgenv.com/ssa_mirnas_db_home.php

miRNA prediction on UTRs : http://genie.weizmann.ac.il/pubs/mir07/mir07_prediction.html

Idea of analysing miRNA Sequencing data :

http://www.illumina.com/applications/epigenetics/small_rna_analysis.ilmn

More:

http://www.bioconductor.org/help/search/index.html?q=miRNA+target

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