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Teach evolution not creationism

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Genome analysis exposes hidden sex secrets

Comment on “Conserved meiotic machinery in Glomus spp., a putatively ancient asexual fungal lineage” by S. Halary et al. 2011. The origin and significance of sex remains one of the most intriguing topics in evolutionary biology. Sexual reproduction requires a big deal of complexity and energy expense at all levels, from the intricate molecular gymnastics …

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Conserved meiotic machinery in Glomus spp., a putatively ancient asexual fungal lineage

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) represent an ecologically important and evolutionarily intriguing group of symbionts of land plants, currently thought to have propagated clonally for over 500 Myr. AMF produce multinucleate spores and may exchange nuclei through anastomosis, but meiosis has never been observed in this group. A provocative alternative for their successful and long asexual evolutionary history is that these organisms may have cryptic sex, allowing them to recombine alleles and…

Graduate Student Position in Algal Evolutionary Genomics

Biology Department, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada One graduate student (Ph.D.) position is available in the laboratory of Dr. Adrian Reyes-Prieto in the Biology Department of the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton. Dr Reyes-Prieto is seeking an enthusiastic graduate student interested in genomic sciences, evolutionary biology and microbial diversity. The candidate should have …

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Halary et al. accepted – On meiosis in mycorrhizal fungi

Just accepted in Genome Biology and Evolution: “Conserved meiotic machinery in Glomus spp., a putatively ancient asexual fungal lineage” by Sebastien Halary, Shehre-Banoo Malik, Levannia Lildhar, Claudio H. Slamovits, Mohamed Hijri and Nicolas Corradi.

Phylogenetic position of Lophomonas striata Bütschli (Parabasalia) from the hindgut of the cockroach Periplaneta americana

Lophomonas striata is a multiflagellate parabasalid commensal in the hindgut of the omnivorous cockroaches Blatta orientalis and Periplaneta americana. Its closest relatives were traditionally thought to include similar multiflagellate parabasalids with a single flagellar area that degenerates during mitosis, such as Joenia and Kofoidia. However, molecular phylogenetic analyses have shown that “lophomonads” are not monophyletic. We have determined the SSU rRNA sequence of L. striata and we find…

Dalhousie #4 TheScientist's "Best Places to Work"

Dalhousie University came out in the 4th place in this year’s “Best Places to Work in Academia” survey by TheScientist.com http://the-scientist.com/2011/07/01/best-places-to-work-academia-2011/

Gile and Slamovits 2011, Protist

Just accepted: Gile and Slamovits – Phylogenetic position of Lophomonas striata Butschli (Parabasalia) from the hindgut of the cockroach Periplaneta americana. Protist, in press. Link to the article What’s the paper about? Parabasalid protists are a very diverse but poorly known type of microbes. They include Trichomonas vaginalis, probably the only parabasalid known to non-specialists …

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EuPathDB

Claudio is attending EuPathDB Workshop 2011 at University of Georgia in Athens, GA

Renny attends summer course on NGS

Renny Lee is leaving for two weeks to the Kellog Biological Station, Michigan State University to attend the Bioinformatics Summer Course 2011 on “Analysing Next-Generation Sequencing Data”. Course’s description: This intensive two week summer course will introduce attendees with a strong biology background to the practice of analyzing short-read sequencing data from Roche 454, Illumina …

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