PhD position in viral evolution and diversity @foaylward

Virginia Tech

Funded PhD positions in the Aylward Lab to study the #evolution and #genomics of giant #viruses. Both computational and wet-lab projects available.

See the full job description on jobRxiv: https://jobrxiv.org/job/virginia-tech-27778-funded-phd-position/?feed_id=64662

#ScienceJobs #hiring #research
Blacksburg #UnitedStatesUS ...
https://jobrxiv.org/job/virginia-tech-27778-funded-phd-position/?feed_id=64662

PhD position in viral evolution and diversity

Post a job in 3min, or find thousands of job offers like this one at jobRxiv!

^jobRxiv

A new episode of the EMBO podcast is out. I spoke with Hsiao-Han Chang, Gytis Dudas, and Hedvig Tamman about viruses, hosts, spillovers, public health... And also starting a new lab, the challenges of mobility, mentorship, and Die Hard Dracula.

#EMBOPodcast #scicomm #SciencePodcast #Virology #Evolution #Microbiology

https://www.embo.org/podcasts/its-viruses-all-the-way-down-a-conversation-with-hsiao-han-chang-gytis-dudas-and-hedvig-tamman/

It’s viruses all the way down: a conversation with Hsiao-Han Chang, Gytis Dudas, and Hedvig Tamman –

As COVID-19 and flu season descends, we talk with three new research group leaders who work on host-virus interactions.

^{Thiago Carvalho (EMBO)}

The name is Costa, James Costa; or, how The Inquisitive Biologist is getting ready for a #Wallace triptych. Reviews coming soon to https://inquisitivebiologist.com

@princetonupress @princetonnature

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Evolution #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Scicomm

#PhD positions available in my group for Fall 2024 - projects focusing on #GiantVirus diversity and #evolution. Opportunities for both molecular wet-lab and #bioinformatics research.

The lab is fun, supportive, and inclusive, and we have many cool new viruses we are studying, so come join us!

Please boost and spread the word!

https://jobrxiv.org/job/virginia-tech-27778-funded-phd-position/

PhD position in viral evolution and diversity

Post a job in 3min, or find thousands of job offers like this one at jobRxiv!

^jobRxiv

For a new week: I dug into the history of a definition I’ve used my entire career, and discovered… we may not need it?

Don’t ask “When is it coevolution?” — ask “How is it coevolution?”

#evolution #ecology #science

https://www.molecularecologist.com/2023/10/13/when-coevolution-definition-history/

Don’t ask “When is it coevolution?” — ask “How is it coevolution?”

A rough-skinned newt, Taricha granulosa, somewhere on the Marin headlands of California. Rough-skinned newts’ geographically varying arms race with predatory garter snakes has made them a cla…

^{The Molecular Ecologist}

Highlight: Unlocking the Ancient Origins of Cell Death

https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evad172

"They propose that early protoeukaryotes were predators, relying on bacterial prey. These bacteria, in response to predation, produced toxins as a defense mechanism. Over time, these bacteria were domesticated to serve as mitochondria within eukaryotic cells, and their toxins evolved into apoptotic factors. "

#evolution #eukaryotes #apoptosis #mitochondria

New blog post just dropped!

"Assembly theory is cool... but doesn't quite do what its inventors say it does."

http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/assembly-theory-is-cool

reviewing this recent Nature paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9

news & views here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03061-y

#evolution #complexityscience #innovation #possibilityspace

Assembly Theory is Cool ...

Disclaimer: I am currently funded by the John Templeton Foundation (JTF). If you'd like to know more about my research project, you can find lots of information (and my book draft) here . I'm...

^{Untethered in the Platonic Realm}

'Both genomes had been analysed before, but the fragmented assemblies had scaffold sizes comparable to the length of long reads prior to assembly. Our new assemblies illustrate how long-read technologies allow for a much better representation of species genomes. We are now able to conduct more accurate downstream assays based on more complete gene and transposable element predictions.'
#Preprint #Evolution #Genomics

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.06.561169v1

Revisiting genomes of non-model species with long reads yields new insights into their biology and evolution

High-quality genomes obtained using long-read data allow not only for a better understanding of heterozygosity levels, repeat content, and more accurate gene annotation, and prediction when compared to those obtained with short-read technologies, but…

^bioRxiv

How did #eukaryotes evolve for extreme temps? https://www.futurity.org/high-temp-eukaryotes-2972442-2/ #protists

#ExtremeEnvironments offer an unprecedented opportunity to understand #microbial #eukaryotic #ecology, #evolution, and #genome #biology: Hannah Rappaport & Angela Oliverio https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40657-4

“several lineages of #amoebae were often recovered from extremely high temperature environments. Studying those lineages may yield great insight into how eukaryotic cells can adapt to life in extremely hot environments.”

This was a fun way to spend my lunch break (full disclosure - I am married to one of the developers).

Look out for it - it will be traveling round the US to libraries and museums

https://today.ku.edu/2023/07/25/ku-natural-history-museum-host-venomventure-new-science-themed-escape-room

#VENOMventure #aVENENOtura #EscapeRoom #bilingual #evolution

Something weird's going on with the Google Scholar index. I just went looking for Janzen (1980) and got ... a paper in Ecological Economics as the top result? And when I forced it to find the canonical paper, it only gave me citations to it?

Did @sse_evolution's move to OUP somehow break the journal's representation in Google Scholar?

#evolution #science

I'm wanting to incorporate some #Rstats in my university #Evolution class so that students learn/reinforce some R skills while increasing their understanding of evolution. I did an internet search and found next to nothing:

Too advanced:
https://www.mimuw.edu.pl/~lukaskoz/teaching/sad2/books/Analysis_of_Phylogenetics_and_Evolution_with_R.pdf

Interesting, but pretty limited in what it does:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.5412

Any recommendations?

Scientists discover how parasites of #viruses drive #superbug #evolution.

#phages #gene_transfer #lateral_transduction

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-parasites-viruses-superbug-evolution.html

Scientists discover how parasites of viruses drive superbug evolution

In a study published in Cell, scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Imperial College London have discovered a new way by which bacteria transmit their genes, enabling them to evolve much faster than previously understood.

^{Science X (Phys.org)}

Isn’t it incredible to live on the same planet where this magnificent, ancient shark once grew up to 65 ft (20m)? 🦈

The massive megalodon swam Earth’s ocean for millions of years.

Funny how many folks mistakenly believe humans are some kind of pinnacle of #evolution. We literally just arrived a few hundred thousand years ago. #science #history

Unraveling the tangled #evolution of #figs.

#genomics #phylogenetics #introgression #Ficus

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-unraveling-tangled-evolution-figs.html

Unraveling the tangled evolution of figs

Containing more than 850 species, fig trees are one of the most diverse groups of plants in the world.

^{Amanda Morris (Phys.org)}

Empirical Evidence That Complexity Limits Horizontal Gene Transfer

https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/15/6/evad089/7180211?login=false

#genomics #evolution #HGT

Empirical Evidence That Complexity Limits Horizontal Gene Transfer

Abstract. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a major contributor to bacterial genome evolution, generating phenotypic diversity, driving the expansion of protein

^{Burch, Christina L (Oxford University Press)}

Happy to say I defended my dissertation "Methods and complexity in phage-bacteria ecology and evolution"!

Much thanks to all those who supported me throughout my PhD.

I'm glad to be sticking around the Turner Lab for another year as a post-doc to continue my work on multispecies phage-bacteria communities

#PhDone #AcademicChatter #AcademicMastodon #Academia #PhD #Ecology #Evolution #Phage #Phages

My first "reviewed preprint" on @eLife !

A Timeline of Bacterial and Archaeal Diversification in the Ocean

https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/88268

Lots of hard work from former PhD student in my lab Carolina Martinez. Part of a collaboration with @pseudacris

We are enjoying the new process so far and working on revisions to address some of the concerns raised by reviewers.

#ocean #marine #microbiology #evolution #ecology

It was wonderful to speak with Vincent Racaniello during the Aquatic Virus Workshop in Quebec last week! Fun conversation.

https://youtu.be/6uQPvg2uc-E

#viruses #ecology #evolution #virology

TWiV 1011: Aquatic viruses

Vincent travels to Québec City, Canada and the 11th Aquatic Virus Workshop, where he speaks with Frank Aylward and Jed Furman about the research of their lab...

^YouTube

We’re still discovering ancient species...

Millions of years before dinosaurs evolved, the saber-toothed Inostrancevia africana was “kind of the T.rex of their time.”

Incidentally, this apex predator was wiped out due to global warming during the Permian-Triassic Extinction. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/science/saber-tooth-fossil-south-africa.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare #science #nature #evolution

Praise for Mutation, Randomness, & Evolution by @arlin — a crucial, perhaps paradigm-shifting, work on the mechanisms of biological #evolution.

As I read, I find myself repeatedly thinking, “exactly!” and “people need to know this!”

An ongoing thread of highlights. 🧵

Happy to see the first experimental project I led finally out in the world! With Jeremy Moore, Sydney Olsen, and Mike Travisano

We combined experimental evolution and mathematical modeling to ask: do bacteria evolve to swim away from phages?

1/n

https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.29.538831

#microbiology #evolution #ecology #phages #phage #bacteria #MicrobialEvolution #MicrobialEcology

Fight not flight: parasites drive the bacterial evolution of resistance, not avoidance

In the face of ubiquitous threats from parasites, hosts often evolve strategies to resist infection or to altogether avoid contact with parasites. At the microbial scale, bacteria frequently encounter viral parasites, bacteriophages.

^bioRxiv

'Our findings demonstrate that developmental bias in fly wings predicts evolvability and macroevolutionary trajectories on a much greater scale than previously appreciated but also suggest that causal explanations for such alignments may go beyond simple constraint hypotheses.'
#Evolution #EvoDevo

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2211210120