Category: Seminars and Talks

Next phyloseminar: Ed Delong on Carl Woese 5/13

Next talk on http://phyloseminar.org

"How Carl Woese transformed the field of microbial ecology"
Ed DeLong (MIT)

The challenges of dissecting naturally occurring microbial
assemblages, with respect to their community composition, interspecies
interactions, functional attributes, and activities, are numerous and
daunting. For many years, these challenges impeded our understanding
of the properties and dynamics of microbial communities, and thus
hindered development of the field of microbial ecology. Enter Carl
Woese: the theory and application of molecular phylogenetics and
genomics in studies of microbial evolution and ecology can be traced
directly to Woese and one of his primary collaborators, Norman Pace.
This lecture will trace the logic and roots of the application of
molecular phylogenetics and genomics to the study of microbial
ecology, through a historical review and examination of its past and
current applications.

West Coast USA: 10:00 (10:00 AM) on Monday, May 13
East Coast USA: 13:00 (01:00 PM) on Monday, May 13
UK: 18:00 (06:00 PM) on Monday, May 13
France: 19:00 (07:00 PM) on Monday, May 13
Japan: 02:00 (02:00 AM) on Tuesday, May 14
New Zealand: 05:00 (05:00 AM) on Tuesday, May 14

Seminar at #UCDavis 5/7 – David Botstein

Special Seminar

Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics

*Note the special time and day

Dr. David Botstein
(Anthony B. Evnin Professor of Genomics)

"Coordination of Growth Rate, Stress Response and Metabolic Activity in Yeast"

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

10:00 am

1022 Life Sciences

Botstein 5-7-13.doc

GGG seminar today: Dan Rokhsar

Genetics Spring 2013 Seminar

1022 Life Sciences Mondays at 4:10PM

April 22, 2013

“In the Beginning: Genomics of Animal Origins and Diversity”

Dan Rokhsar
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Seminar at #UCDavis – Jeffrey Lawrence “Action of Natural Selection on Pentuplet Codons” 3/21 4 PM

Jeffery G Lawrence

Department of Biological Sciences University of Pittsburgh

Action of Natural Selection on Pentuplet Codons
(in bacteria and yeast)

LSB 1022 4PM

THURSDAY March 21, 2013

Seminar “Gene Regulatory Networks in Archaea” Marc Facciotti, 3/1 11 AM Genome Center 4202

The Genome Center Biological Networks Seminars present:

Date: Friday, March 01st , 2013, 11am – 12pm
Location: 4202 GBSF

”Gene Regulatory Networks in Archea”

Speaker: Marc Facciotti, PhD
Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis
http://www.bme.ucdavis.edu/facciotti/

For more information regarding the seminar series, upcoming talks and how to subscribe in our mailing list, please visit http://www.bionets.ucdavis.edu/

Online phylogenetics seminar 2/5 9 AM PST: Fiona Jordan "Testing hypotheses about cultural evolution"

From phyloseminar.org home. Online phylogenetics seminar 2/5: Fiona Jordan “Testing hypotheses about cultural evolution”

From the website:
Anthropologists had a name for the non-independence-of-species-problem way back in the 1880s. Solving “Galton’s Problem”, and the promise of comparative methods for testing hypotheses about cultural adaptation and correlated evolution was a major catalyst for the field of cultural phylogenetics. In this talk I will show how linguistic, cultural, and archaeological data is used in comparative phylogenetic analyses. The “treasure trove of anthropology” – our vast ethnographic record of cultures – is now being put to good use answering questions about cross-cultural similarities and differences in human social and cultural norms in a rigorous evolutionary framework.

West Coast USA:
09:00 (09:00 AM) on Tuesday, February 05

East Coast USA:
12:00 (12:00 PM) on Tuesday, February 05

UK:
17:00 (05:00 PM) on Tuesday, February 05

France:
18:00 (06:00 PM) on Tuesday, February 05

Japan:
02:00 (02:00 AM) on Wednesday, February 06

New Zealand:
06:00 (06:00 AM) on Wednesday, February 06

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

#UCDavis Ecology & Evolution Seminar 1/24: Dawn Sumner #Awesome

Forwarding this:

Dear Colleagues,

The Ecology and Evolution Seminar speaker this week will be our own Dawn Sumner from Geology. Her talk on Thursday January 24th is entitled

The Modern Ecology of Ice-Covered Lakes in Antarctica: A Journey Back to Precambrian Time

and takes place at 4:10pm in 1003 Giedt Hall.

Dawn is one of the principle scientists on Curiosity, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory. You can read about this work on her blog at

http://dawnonmars.blogspot.com/

which links to some marvelous footage/photos of their Mars explorations.

Dawn has done also extensive work on the (nearly) other-wordly ecology of microbial communities in Antarctic lakes to "develop a predictive understanding of how microbial communities produce complex microbialite morphologies." You can find out more about this at

http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/sumner/Dawns_Research/Antarctica.html

and her Antarctic blog http://dawninantarctica.blogspot.com/

Phyloseminar: ""Language phylogenies and cultural evolution" Online 1/16 2 PM PST

From phyloseminar.org home

“Language phylogenies and cultural evolution”

Simon Greenhill (Australian National University)

“Charles Darwin famously noted that there were many curious parallels between the evolution of species and languages. Since then evolutionary biology and historical linguistics have used trees to conceptualise evolution. However, whilst evolutionary biology developed the vast discipline of phylogenetic methods, linguistics dabbled with computational methods before rejecting them. The last decade or so has seen the introduction of phylogenetic methods into linguistics, often with some startling results. In this talk I will present some of these studies, and discuss how phylogenetics can help us grapple with the problems of linguistic and cultural evolution. These problems range from testing population dispersal hypotheses, to investigating the shape of cultural evolution, to inferring the rates at which languages change.

West Coast USA:14:00 (02:00 PM) on Wednesday, January 16
East Coast USA:17:00 (05:00 PM) on Wednesday, January 16
UK:22:00 (10:00 PM) on Wednesday, January 16
France:23:00 (11:00 PM) on Wednesday, January 16
Japan:07:00 (07:00 AM) on Thursday, January 17
New Zealand:11:00 (11:00 AM) on Thursday, January 17

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Seminar at #UCDavis 1/11: Dr. Markus Covert “Towards Whole-Cell Models of Health and Disease “

*****************************************************************

The Genome Center Biological Networks Seminars present:

Towards Whole-Cell Models of Health and Disease

Speaker: Markus Covert
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, Stanford University

Date: Friday, January 11th, 2013, 11am – 12pm
Location: 1005 GBSF

Abstract:
Understanding how complex phenotypes arise from individual molecules and their interactions is a primary challenge in biology that computational approaches are poised to tackle. We report a whole-cell computational model of the life cycle of the human pathogen Mycoplasma genitalium that includes all of its molecular components and their interactions. An integrative approach to modeling that combines diverse mathematics enabled the simultaneous inclusion of fundamentally different cellular processes and experimental measurements. Our whole-cell model accounts for all annotated gene functions and was validated against a broad range of data. The model provides insights into many previously unobserved cellular behaviors, including in vivo rates of protein-DNA association and an inverse relationship between the durations of DNA replication initiation and replication. In addition, experimental analysis directed by model predictions identified previously undetected kinetic parameters and biological functions. We conclude that comprehensive whole-cell models can be used to facilitate biological discovery.

For more information regarding the seminar series, upcoming talks and how to subscribe in our mailing list, please visit http://www.bionets.ucdavis.edu/

Seminar, #UCDavis, 1/10, Lizzie Wolkovich “Community assembly & disassembly under global change”

DEPARTMENT OF EVOLUTION AND ECOLOGY

RECRUITMENT SEMINAR

ECOLOGIST

Dr. Elizabeth Wolkovich

Biodiversity Research Centre Fellow

Department of Zoology

University of British Columbia, Vancouver

"Community assembly and disassembly under global change"

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

1:10pm

1022 Life Sciences Building

Wolkovich Seminar Flyer.doc