Monday, November 25, 2013

November 28, 2013: A paper I am involved in titled "Earliest holozoan expansion of phosphotyrosine signaling" was accepted for publication in Molecular Biology and Evolution.

November 25, 2013: Nicholas Lee's project on Mississippi anuran parasites was funded through a generous grant by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal Undergraduate Research Award.

November 25, 2013: A paper that I am on was just accepted with minor revisions in Molecular Biology and Evolution!

November 25, 2013: The lab's first 2 Illumina libraries are off to be sequenced! 

November 19, 2013: We prepped our first TEM samples this week. We are examining a type of mitochondrial cristae configuration unique among Amoebozoa. We will be using the EM facilitates at I2AT!

Thursday, November 14, 2013

November 13, 2013: Our book chapter on dating the eukaryotic tree of Life using phylogenomics and the fossil record was accepted for publication in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology: Eukaryote Evolution.


November 8, 2013: Nicholas Lee, an undergraduate researcher, was awarded funding for his project on Mississippi anuran parasites by the Department of Biological Sciences,  Biology Student Research Award. Congratulations Nick!


November 6, 2013: The lab’s research was featured on the MS State homepage. The news article is here (http://www.msstate.edu/web/media/detail.php?id=6333).


October 2, 2013: Dr. Jeffrey Silberman (University of Arkansas) and I were interviewed for KUAF’s (an NPR station) “Ozarks at Large” program about our Pygsuia (Pig-Sooie-a) manuscript. The radio show can be heard online (http://www.kuaf.org/content/tiny-organism-gets-familiar-name).


September 19, 2013: Job opportunity in my laboratory is posted on the ISOP website (http://protozoa.uga.edu/pub/employment.html#missi). 


September 19, 2013: Sci-News picked up our Pygsuia paper. Article is here


September 17, 2013: KUAR (a Little Rock NPR affiliate) broadcasted a story about Pygsuia (http://ualrpublicradio.org/post/newly-found-organism-reveals-history-genes-named-after-razorbacks).


September 17, 2013: Our paper describing the amoeba, Pygsuia (“Pig-sooie-a”), was featured on the University of Arkansas’ Newswire


August 28, 2013: Our publication Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences is now onlinePDF


August 14, 2013: Our publication in Nature Communications on the genome of Capsaspora owczarzaki is now available online. PDF


July 31, 2013: Our publication in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences on the evolution of breviate amoeboid flagellates was accepted for publication. 


July 29, 2013: Our book chapter, the “Non-Dictyostelid Sorocarpic Amoebae” in the book Dictyostelids - Evolutionary Patterns and Processes in a Social Amoeba, is now online.


July 10, 2013: Our publication in Nature Communications on the genome of Capsaspora owczarzaki was accepted for publication.


June 26, 2013: Our publication on the evolution of elongation factor-1α (EF-1α) and elongation factor-like (EFL) proteins was published on BMC Evolutionary BiologyPDF

June 24, 2013: Assemblies for the genome and mitochondrial genome of Fonticula alba have been released. The final assembly stats are as follows:

Genome:
Scaffold length 32.22Mb
Contig length 25.33 Mb
# scaffolds 210
Scaffold N50 2.53Mb
# contigs 5693
contig N50 7.56kb

Mitochondrial Genome:
Scaffold length 79.84kb
Contg length 77.6kb
# scaffolds 4
The Life Cycle of Fonticula alba
Scaffold N50 45.19kb
# contigs 5
contig N50 17.89kb