A cool infographic about our recent paper on the induction of food preferences in Tribolium larvae. Graphic by Ipsa Jain.
Infographic: How experience changes food choice in beetle larvae
New paper: Prior experience changes food choice behaviour in beetle larvae
Vrinda and Swastika's paper on larval food choice behaviour in response to prior experience with new foods is out in Ecological Entomology! Several decades ago, it was observed that the juvenile (or larval) stages of several insects change their feeding preference in response to prior experience ("induction of preference"). We explored this trait in the ecological... Continue Reading →
New paper: Wobble-based insights into the bacterial genetic code
Gaurav’s large-scale phylogenetic analysis of bacterial tRNA modification systems is now published in MBE! An important property of tRNA molecules is the ability for wobble base pairing. Apart from the widely known GU wobble pairing, chemically modified bases in a tRNA extend wobble base pairing rules. Such tRNA modifications therefore expand the pool of tRNA... Continue Reading →
New paper: Butterflies and their bacteria
Kruttika's work on the bacterial communities of butterflies is now out in the journal Royal Society Open Science! This was our first large butterfly project, and it was a lot of fun. We collaborated with Krushnamegh Kunte for this project. We chased butterflies, learned to identify different species, and combed through different host plants to find... Continue Reading →
Special issue on the Genetics of Adaptation
Krushnamegh Kunte and I edited a special virtual issue of the journal MBE (Molecular Biology and Evolution), featuring a few papers arising from the 2016 Genetics of Adaptation meeting we organized – and more. It’s on the MBE website now – check it out!
New paper: Females drive sex ratio effects
I'm so happy that our work on the fitness effects of sex ratio in flour beetles is finally out in the American Naturalist! I say "finally" because this work represents multiple years of hard work by a large-ish team, including people from Radhika Venkatesan's lab at NCBS. In fact, apart from me, all other lab... Continue Reading →
New paper: Amino acid specific codon usage and translational selection
We have a new paper this month, in Genome Biology and Evolution. This paper follows from the lab's long standing interest in codon usage bias, and describes Saurabh's analysis to understand how codon use and tRNA gene numbers vary with bacterial growth rate. Typically, highly expressed genes use specific synonymous codons more often, compared to other... Continue Reading →
New paper: Experimental evolution of insect immune memory
Our new paper describing Imroze and Arun's massive experiment with thousands of infected beetles was recently published online. Within about 10 generations of exposure to Bacillus thuringiensis, flour beetles evolved divergent immune responses: either improved but generalized immune resistance, or specific immune priming (memory). We think that the divergent response is driven by the frequency... Continue Reading →
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