We're starting a series of reviews of the lab's favourite papers. Here's the first review by Shyam Buddh, featuring the famous LTEE lines. Enjoy! Dynamics of adaptation and diversification: a 10,000-generation experiment with bacterial populations R E Lenski, M Travisano Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jul 1994, 91 (15) 6808-6814 If we classify... Continue Reading →
Saurabh successfully defended his PhD thesis, for which he analysed patterns and causes of GC content evolution and codon usage across thousands of bacteria. He gave a superb (virtual) talk, and we all celebrated his successes with a custom cake on the lawn. Congratulations, Dr Mahajan!
Our collaborative work (with Shashi Thutupalli’s lab at NCBS) on tracking mistranslation-induced phenotypic variability is now published! Protein sequences often differ because of underlying differences in DNA sequence (i.e. genetic mutations). However, making mistakes while building the protein can also introduce differences in the protein sequence, although at a low frequency. Proteins altered in this... Continue Reading →
Towards the end of this year, long-term lab members left for new adventures; coincidentally both going to Germany! Mrudula is starting as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cologne, and Parth is jumping into a PhD program at the University of Dusseldorf. We'll miss them both, and are glad that we at least managed... Continue Reading →
Laasya’s single-author review on how non-genetic changes can contribute to evolution is now out in Current Genetics! Transfer of information in biology usually occurs from nucleic acids to protein, but not vice-versa (The Central Dogma). Any molecular alteration that does not change the DNA sequence (genotype) is generally short lived, and is thought to have... Continue Reading →
Apart from humans, many organisms acquire beneficial bacterial partners from the food that they eat. But what about generalists, whose diet can vary every day? We asked whether the bacteria in the diet of the red flour beetle – a grain pest found across the world – impact the beetles’ fitness in different diets. For... Continue Reading →
Shantanu's work on female colour variation in the widespread, tiny damselfly Agriocnemis pygmaea is now out! Females of this damselfly (seen at the campus pond) come in two colors: red and blue, as well as a bunch of intermediate forms. We wondered whether these colours represent allelic forms, or ontogenic (age-related) change. From laboratory studies... Continue Reading →
As the pandemic unfolded (and continues) in India, some of us from the lab joined the ISRC, a motley group of scientists across India who banded together to address various issues relevant to COVID-19. The group has created a large repository of accurate scientific information about the pandemic; busted hoaxes; organized a number of formal... Continue Reading →
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