BOL: Related items

Welch Lab

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 18:21:13 -0500

They are based in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge.

The research covers diverse areas of evolutionary biology, and molecular evolution in particular. It combines theoretical and empirical approaches, and particularly evolutionary inference from genome sequence data.

Links @ http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/research/welch/GroupPage/Home.html

Evolution and Cancer

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:28:49 -0500

Air date: Wednesday, January 04, 2012, 3:00:00 PM Time displayed is Eastern Time, Washington DC Local Category: Wednesday Afternoon Lectures Description: There is a broad consensus that cancer is the result of somatic cells having serially gained, by a series of mutations, the ability to grow independently, to recruit resources from the circulation and the stroma, to invade local tissues, and to found anatomically distant metastases, ultimately killing the host. From the point of view of the cancer-causing somatic cell population, this is evolution driven by mutation and selection. Genomics has resulted in a parallel consensus that the central functions of all eukaryotes are highly conserved, not only at the level of individual protein functions, but also complex biological pathways and systems. These ideas motivated a comparison between results of molecular genetic studies of experimental evolution in yeast and the molecular genetic phenomena associated with tumorigenesis and tumor progression. We find some very striking similarities, including recurring genomic rearrangements, alterations of the regulation of specific growth-promoting genes, population-genetic features that affect the fitness trajectories of growth rate variants in evolving populations, and physiological and metabolic similarities derived from the conservation of the basic plan of growth and cell multiplication among all eukaryotes. It is hoped that some of the insights from yeast will aid the interpretation of sequence changes found in tumors, especially in the urgent necessity to distinguish 'driver' from 'passenger' mutations." David Botstein's fundamental contributions to modern genetics include the development of genetic methods for understanding biological functions and the discovery of the functions of many yeast and bacterial genes. In 1980, Botstein and three colleagues proposed a method for mapping human genes that laid the groundwork for the Human Genome Project. The basic principle of the mapping scheme was to develop, by recombinant DNA techniques, random single-copy DNA probes capable of detecting DNA sequence polymorphisms when hybridized to restriction digests, or specific fragments, of an individual's DNA. The method was used in subsequent years to identify several human disease genes, such as Huntington's and BRCA1. Variations of this method enabled the sequencing phase of the Human Genome Project. In the 1990s Botstein, having moved to Stanford University School of Medicine, collaborated with Patrick O. Brown of Stanford in exploiting DNA microarrays to study genome-wide gene expression patterns in yeast and in human cancers. This required developing a new statistical method and graphical interface, widely used today to interpret genomic data. Botstein also has helped to create, with Michael Ashburner and Gerald Rubin, a bioinformatics initiative to unify the representation of gene and gene product attributes across all species, called Gene Ontology. He graduated from Harvard College and earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan. He worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1967 to 1988; served as vice president for science at Genentech from 1988 to 1990; chaired the Department of Genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine from 1990 to 2003; and joined the Princeton University faculty in 2003. He has sat on numerous editorial boards and was the founding editor of Molecular Biology of the Cell. Among recent major awards, Bostein won the Peter Gruber Foundation Prize in Genetics in 2003, the Apple Science Innovator Award in 2008, and the Albany Medical Center Prize in 2010. The NIH Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series includes weekly scientific talks by some of the top researchers in the biomedical sciences worldwide. For more information, visit: The NIH Director's Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series Author: Dr. David Botstein, Princeton University Runtime: 00:59:58 Permanent link: http://videocast.nih.gov/launch.asp?17046

The Cat: evolution, domestication and Genome 10k

Sun, 10 Nov 2013 14:33:56 -0600

A public lecture by Dr Stephen J O'Brien at the UCD Earth Institute, University College Dublin, Ireland. Dr O'Brien is a world leading molecular biologist and dedicated conservationist who uses the tools of molecular biology to help protect endangered species and understand devastating diseases such as cancer and AIDS. He received his PhD in Genetics from Cornell University, USA, in 1971. He then joined the prestigious National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health as a post-doc in 1971 and, there, served as Founder and Chief of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity from 1986-2011. In December 2011, he joined the Theodosius Dobzhansky Center for Genome Bioinformatics, St. Petersburg State University, Russia, as Chief Scientific Officer. Convinced of the utility of exploring diverse species to advance our understanding of the human genome, Dr O'Brien and his team have assembled over 62,000 animal and 424,000 human tissue/DNA specimens, facilitating wide-ranging studies of disease gene associations, species adaptation and natural history. His research interests and expertise span human and comparative genomics, genetic epidemiology, HIV/AIDS, retro-virology, bioinformatics biodiversity and species conservation. Dr O'Brien is best known for documenting the remarkable genetic uniformity of African cheetahs, resolving the mammalian tree of life, describing heretofore unrecognized species of Orangutans, African forest elephants, and Bornean clouded leopards. He is credited with the discovery of CCR5 delta 32, the first of 20 human AIDS restriction genes, which imparts natural immunity to HIV. He is the one of the founders of the Genome 10K initiative, has published over 750 leading research papers, written multiple books and is adjunct professor in over 12 international leading universities. The UCD Earth Institute, University College Dublin, is a multidisciplinary research and education centre with a focus on creating and sharing new knowledge. We aim to contribute to sustainable solutions for many of the pressing Earth-related problems affecting societies now and in the near future.

The Minerva Research Group for Bioinformatics

Tue, 27 May 2014 15:48:14 -0500

The focus of the bioinformatics group is to use computational approaches to gain an insight into genome evolution in primates.

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

Protein function annotation and machine learning - UPMC - Paris, France

Sat, 02 Aug 2014 01:22:52 -0500

Protein function annotation and machine learning - UPMC - Paris, France

Job Description: We are interested in finding an excellent postdoc with interests in protein functional annotation, machine learning and computer grids. The position is open for 3.5 years at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in the heart of paris.

Research topic: Protein function annotation, multiple probabilistic models, domain architecture, machine learning, combinatorial optimization, computer grid.

Title: A novel integrative platform for large scale protein annotation that exploits a multitude of diversified probabilistic models in several protein signature databases.

We propose a novel integrated approach for large scale protein annotation that will exploit an unprecedented amount of genomic data as well as sophisticated machine learning techniques and combinatorial optimization approaches taking advantages of High Performance Computing (HPC) environments. The idea is to uncover as much as possible the evolutionary processes of protein sequences that took place throughout the whole tree of life and that affected the evolution of a protein family. We have already demonstrated in a previous work that the problem of functional annotation is inherent to the ability of uncovering such paths. Now, we shall extend this approach to large scale genome annotation by considering 11 different protein databases, constituted by about 10^9 protein sequences, and by producing a large pool of diversified probabilistic models coding for about 10^7 evolutionary protein pathways. Such models will be used to search for specific domains in genomes to be annotated. Our previous methodology needs to be fundamentally improved to deal with this large amount of biological data. In this project, we shall work on the algorithms to reduce the space of models and the search complexity, and we shall implement some important algorithmic changes towards the realization of a powerful integrated annotation tool.

Where: This project is run on the Laboratoire de Biologie Computationnelle et Quantitative UMR7238 CNRS-UPMC – Analytical Genomics team, headed by A.Carbone. It is co-advised with Pierre-Henri Wuillemin, Laboratoire d’Informatique de Paris 6 – Equipe DECISION.

Start date: September 1st, 2014
Contact Person: Alessandra Carbone
Contact: alessandra.carbone@lip6.fr

Nicolas Corradi Lab

Tue, 26 May 2015 16:19:02 -0500

The goal of our research is to better understand the biology of microbial organisms of significant ecological, veterinary and medical importance.
To achieve this goal, our team combines the power of next generation DNA sequencing and bioinformatics with molecular biology and experimental procedures.

Main research topics:
- Comparative and Population Genomics of Plant Symbionts
- Parasite Genome Evolution
- Experimental Evolution of Microbial Symbionts and Parasites
- Phylogenomics of Early Branching Fungi

More at http://corradilab.weebly.com/

Desai Lab

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 10:21:07 -0500

Evolutionary Dynamics and Population Genetics

Natural selection and other evolutionary forces lead to particular patterns of evolutionary dynamics, and they leave characteristic signatures on the genetic variation within populations. We use a combination of theory and experiments to study the dynamics and population genetics of natural selection in asexual populations such as microbes and viruses.

We use both theory and experiments to study evolutionary dynamics and population genetics, particularly in situations where natural selection is pervasive.

http://desailab.oeb.harvard.edu/home

Comparative genomics educational material and papers bookmarks

Jit — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 16:23:30 -0600

Alignment of the porcine genome against seven other mammalian genomes (Supplementary Information) identified homologous synteny blocks (HSBs). Using porcine HSBs and stringent filtering criteria, 192 pig-specific evolutionary breakpoint regions (EBRs) were located. The number of porcine EBRs is comparable to the number of bovine-lineage-specific EBRs (100) reported earlier using a slightly lower resolution (500 kilobases (kb)), indicating that both lineages evolved with an average rate of ~2.1 large-scale rearrangements per million years after the divergence from a common cetartiodactyl ancestor ~60 Myr ago². This rate compares to ~1.9 rearrangements per million years within the primate lineage (Supplementary Table 11). A total of 20 and 18 cetartiodactyl EBRs (shared by pigs and cattle) were detected using the pig and human genomes as a reference, respectively.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7424/abs/nature11622.html

Eugene V. Koonin Lab

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 05:01:15 -0600

Interested in understanding the evolution of life. To obtain glimpses of such understanding, we employ existing and new methods of computational biology to perform research in several major areas.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/groups/koonin/

Edanchin Lab

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 08:00:07 -0600

My main topics of interest are:

The impact of non tree-like evolution such as horizontal gene transfers and hybridization on species biology
Evolution and adaptation of animals in the absence of sexual reproduction and the underlying mechanisms
Genomic signatures of adaptation to a parasitic life-style

More at https://edanchin.org/