I wanted to alert you that the Biology Department at Howard University currently has a search on for 3 tenure-track faculty, including one in Bioinformatics, that will close on Feb. 17th. Our Department has added several new faculty recently that have phylogenetics-focused research programs, so I wanted to make sure any potential candidates in your labs were aware of the position. Don’t hesitate to contact me, or search chair Dr. Fatimah Jackson (fatimah.jackson@howard.edu) if you have any questions. Thank you for your time, and all the best, Three Tenure Track Biology Positions – HigherEdJobs.pdf
It has one of the worst microbe-evolution sections of text I have seen in a long long time:
Mitochondria plays a major role in cell signaling, growth and energy production, and for good health they need to function properly.
But the relationship of antibiotics to mitochondria may go back a long way. In evolution, mitochondria descended from bacteria, which were some of the earliest life forms, and different bacteria competed with each other for survival. That an antibiotic would still selectively attack the portion of a cell that most closely resembles bacteria may be a throwback to that ingrained sense of competition and the very evolution of life.
Yup. That antibiotics that target bacteria also affect mitochondria is a throwback to that ingrained sense of competition and the very evolution of life.
Can anyone – anyone – please – please – tell me what that means?
The Friedberg Lab is recruiting postdoctoral fellows to several newly funded projects. The lab is relocating to Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa as part of a university-wide Big Data initiative. Iowa State is a large research university with world-leading computational resources, and a strong highly collaborative community of bioengineering, bioinformaticians and life science researchers.
The successful candidates will be joining the lab at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Veterinary Microbiology. Areas of interest include: bacterial genome evolution, gene and protein function prediction, microbial genome mining, animal and human microbiome, and biological database analysis.
These are bioinformatics postdoc positions, and the successful applicants would be required to perform research employing computational biology skills.
Requirements: A PhD in microbiology, bioinformatics, or a related field. A strong publication record in peer-reviewed journals. Strong programming skills; strong oral and written communication skills in English; Strong domain knowledge of molecular biology. Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience. The Friedberg lab is a computational biology lab equipped with high-end cluster computers and bioinformatics support.
Ames, Iowa is constantly ranked as one of the best places to live in the US, and has received numerous awards for being a progressive, innovative and exciting community with high affordability and high quality of life.
Candidates should send a C.V. and statement of interest as one PDF document, and have three letters of reference sent independently by their authors to Dr. Iddo Friedberg at Friedberg.Lab.Jobs. Screening of applications begins immediately and will continue until the positions are filled. The positions are expected to start on or after June 2015.
All offers of employment, oral and written, are contingent upon the university’s verification of credentials and other information required by federal and state law, ISU policies/procedures, and may include the completion of a background check. Iowa State University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, marital status, disability, or protected veteran status, and will not be discriminated against. Inquiries can be directed to the Director of Equal Opportunity, 3350 Beardshear Hall, (515) 294-7612
I had the incredible luck to be on an assignment in the midwest this week visiting the lab of Jock Giblet, one of the world’s experts in the new and merging superfield of microbiome forensics. Giblet has been at the forefront of forward thinking on using foreheads and foreskins and other microbiome rich samples to do forensics. His lab has already been involved in hundreds of criminal investigations where microbial forensics was used to do important things like (1) show that microbes were on people involved in crimes (2) that analysis of microbes can be used to reveal who was last in a room (making a few assumptions like, you know who was in the room and what their microbes look like and who was not in the room) and (3) the microbes could be considered as possible instigators of various crimes.
Anyway – I was there to interview Giblet about his latest amazing work on the how microbiome analysis can be used to cheat at card games. But he was distracted by something. He called me into his spacious yet somehow very dark and depressing office and said “Can I let you in on a secret?” Of course I said yes. Alas, for him, he never said “Can this be off the record?” so I am reporting to you what I then found out, along with some secret recordings I made with my awesome Google Glass recording device.
Over the next 24 hours I witness Giblet and members of his microbiome lab then do a top secret microbiome driven analysis of the deflategate controversy. It was so exciting to be witness to this edge cutting research. Below is a description of what I witnessed.
1. Giblet and team travel to the airport to collect footballs from the NFL
The footballs lined up waiting to be picked up
2. Giblet brings footballs back to the lab and also collect wan assortment of other materials for control experiments
Aerial of the Top Secret Lab where Dr. Giblet works
3. They then set up a microbiome analysis in their top secret lab with some key samples for testing and as part of the experiment
Another kind of footballA key control – a Patriots softballYet another kind of footballA regulation footballA football collected at halftime from the Patriots gameNew, sterile examples of the suspected tampering tools
4. It was here that I was able to finally activate the video recording on my Google Glass. It only worked sporadically but I did get some video of the Giblet lab in action carrying out a microbiome forensic study. Basically, they used these really complicated secret sampling devices that came hidden in a tube:
Top secret microbiome sampling device
And they used this to collect microbiomes from multiple sources including hands, the suspected deflation devices (before and after handling), and the balls before and after handling. Here is what I could get:
After doing some test samples the then got the footballs from the NFL that they had picked up at the airport and sampled them too. They also spent a lot of time on the phone discussing some sort of sampling of the hands of all employees of the Patriots and the other team. And while we were sampling the footballs someone showed up in the lab with a bag of more of these special sampling devices labelled with names of various people.
They then took all the special sampling devices and “got the fu#*(#@ DNA out of them, for sure”. It was exciting to watch.
5. Sequencing
The DNA from the sampling devices was then dripped into a small device that plugged into a laptop computer via a USB port. It looked a bit like a thumb drive. Dr. Giblet spent a lot of time looking at the screen, typing some stuff, and crying and cursing. He then said “Screw these minions. I am going back to the Illuminati” and he carried a box of samples out the door, cursing, in a strange accent. I am not sure how he was connected to the Illuminati but nevertheless, he returned eight hours later (I was getting really impatient, and hungry, sitting there waiting for him, still wearing my Google Glasses). And he looked happier. And he said “Booyah – we have data”.
He then explained to me how he had taken the DNA out of the microbes in the samples and did some special chemistry and got out a file with information that would help determine what microbes were in each sample.
6. Analysis
Dr. Giblet and two other people who seemed to be employees of his, then sat in front of an old IBM computer doing something. I am not sure but I think their names were Jane Jane and Sir Robert. Very interesting people I note. Anyway, the cursed a lot, typed a lot, kept talking about some sort of chime they kept hearing. These were smart people I think. But really secretive and talking in code all the time. In fact, they kept asking Sir Robert to do more code, though I note, I had no idea what he was saying anyway.
Nevertheless, after 10 more hours they finally woke me up (I had fallen asleep on the lab floor) and said “We have the answer.” And then they had me sit in front of a computer to look at some pictures. By this point my Google Glasses were really acting up. The best pics I could get are shown below.
Apparently these graphs showed that the culprit behind the NFL DeflateGate controversy was none other than Jock Giblet himself. That is, the samples from the Patriots’ footballs most resembled samples from Giblet’s hands. He swore to his friends and colleagues that it was not him and that he would never do something like that. But as they called 911 they said “Sorry Jock. We will miss you.”
Then they shuffled me out the door too. They never noticed the Google Glass, but I have been cut off from my sources so not sure what happened to Jock after he was taken away.
On Sunday, February 8, six UC Davis natural history museums will once again open their doors to the public for tours and family-friendly activities. The museums are: The UC Davis Center for Plant Diversity (herbarium), the Botanical Conservatory, The Bohart Museum of Entomology, The Anthropology Collections, the Paleontology Collections, and the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology.
Attached is a map of where the museums are on campus. The UC Davis Botanical Conservatory is behind Storer Hall and the Center for Plant Diversity is in the Sciences Laboratory Building.
“Spatial food-web dynamics in the Serengeti ecosystem”
John Fryxell, University of Guelph
Dr. John M. Fryxell
Professor
Research
My research focuses on interactions between behavior and consumer-resource dynamics. A mix of theoretical and empirical approaches is used to consider the dynamics of specific systems. Theoretical questions of interest include herbivore and carnivore movement in relation to resource availability and predation risk, optimal diet, patch selection, and dispersal patterns in heterogeneous environments, the effect of social interference and territoriality on consumer-resource interactions, and impacts of harvesting by humans on fish and mammal populations.
Empirical work has been concentrated on 3 different terrestrial ecosystems over the past decade: large herbivores and carnivores in Serengeti National Park (Tanzania), woodland caribou, wolves, and moose in boreal forests of northern Ontario (Canada), and mustelid carnivores and other small mammals in boreal forests of northern Ontario. In each case, my graduate students and I conduct detailed field and experimental studies of behavioral ecology of both predators and prey. Theoretical models are then used to assess the implications of behavioral strategies on population and community dynamics and model predictions are then tested against long-term observational data from terrestrial ecosystems.
Kevin McCann and I recently initiated a collaborative research program on spatial food web dynamics of phytoplankton and zooplankton populations in massive aquatic mesocosms in the new Limnotron facility at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario. Initial experiments relate to resource- vs predator- and ratio-dependent functional and numerical responses, responses of predator and algal populations to pulsed versus continuous nutrient influx, resource- and density-dependent diffusion patterns by zooplankton and phytoplankton, and spatial pattern formation in relation to population fluctuations.
An ongoing applied research interest relates to sustainable harvesting of fish and mammal populations. Key questions relate to long-term stability of harvested populations due to dynamic variation in harvester effort, effects of bioeconomic dynamics on long-term stability of fish stocks and prices, and spatial processes in harvested populations with and without no-harvest reserves.
Please join us for our next Equity in STEM and Entrepreneurship (ESTEME) event happening on Thursday, January 29th at 5:30PM in GBSF auditorium! We will be having a special event featuring local broadcast and television station KVIE to debut our next film showing of Makers: Women in Politics! Refreshments will be provided!
ESTEME’s mission is to serve as a leadership training program that teaches valuable skills to emerging graduate student leaders. Moreover, ESTEME serves the local community by raising awareness surrounding equity and access, hosting workshops to increase leadership skills, and leading outreach to K-12 schools to encourage young girls in STEM. ESTEME is led by a powerhouse team of students from the Biotechnology Program at UC Davis. If you are interested in participating as a volunteer and in future event planning, please email esteme.ucd.
