I have been interested in bacterial pan genomes for some time: apart from acquiring mutations in genes shared between strains, bacteria are able to pick up genes (via several Lateral Gene Transfer processes), duplicate genes and also lose genes. These … Continue reading
The BBSRC GW4 Universities Doctoral Training Program is currently advertising PhD projects. This is a slightly complicated process, but basically comes down to prospective students picking a project offered by scientists working at participating universities and institutions and applying to … Continue reading
I attended a small, but very nice meeting last week at the University of Bath. The topic was the development of software to measure all important parameters in bacterial population genomics datasets. It was organized by Daniel Falush, who is … Continue reading
I just had a paper out which was an enlightening experience to write. Along with three Dutch co-authors, it was mainly a collaboration with Adam Eyre-Walker at Sussex (see this previous post). The manuscript morphed from a data paper into … Continue reading
Two weeks ago I visited collaborator Adam Eyre-Walker at the University of Sussex in Brighton. Adam and I have been working on a paper exploring what selective forces underly the rate with which bacteria take up new genes, using insights … Continue reading
Last week I attended the Society for General Microbiology’s Autumn Conference held this year at the University of Sussex in Brighton (actually just outside of Brighton in Falmer). The main reason for going was the ‘Impact of bacteriophage in the … Continue reading
I just published a paper on a user-friendly webserver for prokaryote genomics analysis with colleagues from the universities of Sussex, Wageningen and Nijmegen. The webserver is available here and the paper is freely accessible at the PLoS ONE website. From … Continue reading
