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!
Announcing the 2018 SPEEC-UP competition
I'm happy to announce that the 2nd edition of the SPEEC-UP 2018 meeting is open for abstracts. The meeting features student presentations (including research project staff and postdocs) on Ecology, Evolution, Environmental Sciences and Conservation. The meeting is organised by a bunch of folks from ATREE, IISc, NCBS, Dakshin, NCF, and WCS. This year, SPEEC-UP will be... Continue Reading →
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 →
Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Fellowship
I am very happy to say that for the next 5 years (beginning January 2018), a large part of our work will be generously funded by a Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Intermediate Fellowship Award. As part of the grant, I have an open postdoctoral position for a microbiologist or an entomologist who is interested in... Continue Reading →
Laasya and Parth win poster award
Congratulations to Laasya and Parth for winning a poster award at the 2018 NCBS Annual talks! The poster described how mistranslation seems to influence the bacterial stress response, focusing on initiator tRNA mutants.
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 →
Winter conference season
This winter is packed with exciting meetings! Here's the menu: Pratibha and I just returned from a fantastic SMBE satellite meeting in Kaziranga, Assam. Congratulations to Pratibha for getting a travel grant to present her work! The meeting brought together a bunch of people working on microbial evolution in natural and experimental populations. There was... Continue Reading →
