Dr Sofia Robb, who completed her PhD at the University of Utah, joined the lab in August 2011 and has been working on the NSF funded Rice transposable element project in collaboration with Susan Wessler’s lab. She has [...]]]> Several postdocs have joined the group in the last few months, though I’ve been remiss to make an announcement.

Dr Sofia Robb, who completed her PhD at the University of Utah, joined the lab in August 2011 and has been working on the NSF funded Rice transposable element project in collaboration with Susan Wessler’s lab. She has already developed a new tool for identification of TEs from high throughput sequencing which we are employing on several varieties of rice and expanding it to be a more general purpose tool. Sofia is also co-developing teaching modules for the Dynamic Genomes course.

Dr Brad Cavinder, who completed his PhD at Michigan State University, joined the lab in January 2012 and is working on transposable elements in mosquitoes as part of the WM Keck funded project to identify and utilize active TEs as molecular tools in mosquitoes.

A third new member of the lab, Peng Liu who completed her PhD at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will start in February to work on molecular characterization of some pathogenesis factors in the amphibian pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.

Jason and Yizhou at [...]]]> Congrats to graduate student Yizhou Wang who passed his qualifying exam today. We’re proud to have him through this hurdle and to continue working on his research into genome defense and silencing of transposable elements in Neurospora crassa.

Jason and Yizhou at Asilomar 2011

Some press releases on the project below and we will coordinate it through several websites including a [...]]]> Our community sequencing project at the JGI was awarded which will allow a consortium of researchers to sequence 1000 fungal genomes through the DOE’s Joint Genome Institute. The intention is to sample two species from every major lineage of Fungi.

Some press releases on the project below and we will coordinate it through several websites including a forum for discussion about potential species beyond the target list.

• International Team to Sequence Genomes of Fungi
• International team to sequence genomes of fungi
• Forest Service Part of Team Sequencing 1,000 Fungal Genomes

Carlos worked with postdoc John Abramyan on the CBM18 gene family in Bdto confirm gene [...]]]> This week the summer student programs ended and Carlos Rojas, Ramy Wissa and Lorena Rivera all gave presentations and posters on their work.  We really enjoyed having them around for the summer and look forward to their possible continuation in the Fall.

Carlos worked with postdoc John Abramyan on the CBM18 gene family in Bdto confirm gene expression of the members of the family by RT-PCR before we choose a subset to work on further.

Carlos Rojas explaining his poster on CBM18

Lorena and Ramy worked with graduate student Divya Sain on a screen of Neurosporastrains with candidate cell wall genes knocked out.  They completed a screen of 115 mutants x 3 replicates = a lot of petri dishes for their first time in the laboratory. Below is a picture of Ramy and Lorena with their peers from the MARCU program.

The 2011 MARCU* students gather before their presentations

Daniel Borcherding and Ragu Ramamurthy join us to work full time on the FungiDB project to support genomic data integration, website improvements, and supporting the system move from beta into production mode.  We look forward to new improvements in the system and establishing a release cycle [...]]]> Welcome to two new programmers to the team working on FungiDB.

Daniel Borcherding and Ragu Ramamurthy join us to work full time on the FungiDB project to support genomic data integration, website improvements, and supporting the system move from beta into production mode.  We look forward to new improvements in the system and establishing a release cycle for the website and DB.