Welcome Jamie Alfieri
Jamie Alfieri (re)joined the lab as a Ph.D Student in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Program. Jamie will be working on the genomics of avian hybridization. Welcome back Jamie!
Circadian-microbiome manuscript preprint on PeerJ
Our manuscript looking focusing on microbiota acquisition under different photoperiods is now under review at PeerJ and is also published as a preprint. Check it out here: Circadian disruption and divergent microbiota acquisition under extended photoperiods in chicken
Undergrad research paper preprint
Our manuscript looking at genetic diversity and effective population sizes in a captive Red Junglefowl population is now published as a preprint while it is under peer review. Kudos to undergrad researcher Nic Faust who worked on generating some of the data in this manuscript. Check out the paper here: Effective population sizes and adaptive genetic variation in a captive bird population
Undergrads present at Student Research Week
Undergraduate researchers Nik Faust and Morgan Modrzejewski presented a talk and poster, respectively, on the work they have been doing in our lab, at the Texas A&M Student Research Week. SRW is the largest student-run symposium of its kind. Congrats to Nik and Morgan for the hard work that led to the presentations!
PAG 2018
Just back from a rather quick trip to the Plant and Animal Genomes conference in San Diego. It was a really good meeting. The poultry workshop had also organized a special session on gene editing, which included talks by people working on a range of applications – all the way from Erich Jarvis (Rockefeller), Helen Sang (Roslin) and Janet Fulton (Hy-Line). A lot of momentum from the academic community towards adopting gene editing tech in livestock genomics. Great news! In…
Animal Genetics Conference in Cambridge, UK
I recently presented at the Animal Genetics and Disease conference at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridge, UK. This was the inaugural meeting of this new conference. The conference featured speakers including Leif Andersson, Sue Lamont, Helen Sang, Peter Parham, and Elaine Ostrander (NIH) among other many amazing speakers. I really liked the small close setting of this conference which was great to meet people. I presented data on new work we’ve been doing on structural genetic variation in the…
Rohit Rohra, M.S.
On April 4th, Rohit Rohra successfully passed his final evaluation for his PPiB program, and in doing so will receive his M.S. Biotechnology in May 2017. He presented his program portfolio and research experiences to his committee and he was passed unanimously. Congratulations Rohit!
Wakonse
I participated in the Wakonse South Teaching conference held in Burnet, Texas over the weekend of March 31st. Other than being in a gorgeous location and the perfect time to be there, I had my mind blown repeatedly during some of the teaching workshops I attended there. I came back with some ideas to overhaul my own teaching, especially my undergrad genetics course. During the downtime in the conference, I made full use of the opportunity to be out and…
Upcoming talk at Travis Audubon
With the increased attention that golden-cheeked warblers are getting, with efforts to delist the species, I believe it is a great opportunity to educate and inform the lay population, as well as the very active birding community it Texas, about what the demographic recovery means and what it doesn’t. To follow up my talks in the last year with Audubon San Antonio and Texas Ornithological Society, I will be talking about this topic at Travis Audubon in May this year.
Efforts to delist Golden-cheeked warblers in the news… again
The endangered golden-cheeked warbler is making news again. Some groups in the state believe that the bird must be removed from the endangered species list, and hence open up land for urban development. Last time around (in 2015), the USFWS did not find sufficient evidence that the species had recovered enough to be taken off the list. The fact remains that Athrey et al showed in 2011 that the genetic diversity had declined so steeply in the past 100 years,…
