3CPG, together with an anonymous donor, have sponsored a new non-majors course on Personal Genomics and Medicine at Cornell where undergrads engage by participating in their own ancestry testing.

For more, see Cornell Chronicle article

Adam Siepel, Assoc. Prof., Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, and Assoc. Director of 3CPG, has received a Guggenheim fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Siepel will use the fellowship to support a sabbatical leave for the 2012-13 academic year in Cambridge, U.K. While there, he will work at the European Bioinformatics Institute in nearby Hinxton. In addition to continuing his research in computational genomics, he plans to explore opportunities for

To better understand the barriers between different species, Shamoni Maheshwari and Daniel Barbash investigated differences in a rapidly evolving Drosophila gene that causes hybrid incompatibility.  To their surprise, they found the Lhr gene casues incompatibility because the regulatory sequences and associated trans-acting factors have diverged, leading to misregulation of this gene in hybrids.

The PLoS Genetics paper can be found here.

The Aquadro lab reports that proteins can co-evolve even if they do not physically interact.  Selective pressures also act on proteins in a pathway together and on proteins that have similar expression levels.

The Genome Research paper can be found here.

The Wolfner group has identified two proteases found in male D. melanogaster seminal fluids that are needed for ovulation and sperm storage in females.  These proteins, which are transmitted to the female flies during mating, may be members of a signaling cascade that control many mating processes.

For more details, the PLoS Genetics paper can be found here.

Martin Wiedmann's group used next generation sequencing to map the evolutionary history of a bacterial food poisoning outbreak.  Doing so allowed them to distinguish between different instances of food poisoning caused by similar bacterial strains of S. enterica.  Using this technology in future outbreaks will allow the source of the food poisoning to be accurately determined.

See the paper in Applied and Environmental Microbiology and related Cornell Chronicle article.

Anna Savage and Kelly Zamudio's paper just out in Proc. Natl. Acad. of Sci., USA demonstrates that sequence variation in MHC genes account for differential response to the chytrid fungus that appears to be a key factor in the the wide-spread decline in frog populations.

See also recent Cornell Chronicle article.

Alon Keinan's group (Srikanth Gottipati and Leonardo Arbiza), together with Adam Siepel and Andrew Clark, contrasted human genetic variation between chromosome X and the autosomes (non-sex chromosomes), based on whole-genome next-generation sequencing data from the 1000 Genomes Project. Results point to sex-biased demographic history of human populations, as well as to differential effect of natural selection on chromosome X.

Research Article in Nature Genetics

Announcing workshops for the users of the CBSU / 3CPG  BioHPC Laboratory.
We are pleased to announce 3 new workshops targeted to current and future users of BioHPC Laboratory. The workshops will provide the information needed to optimally use BioHPC Lab resources:
“Linux for Biologists” February 23 3:30pm-5:00pm in Rhodes 655
“Using BioHPC Lab Software” March 2 3:30pm-5:00pm in Rhodes 655
“Using software via BioHPC web interface” March 9 3:30pm-5:

Announcing the BioHPC, a new High Performance Computing Laboratory facility in 635 Rhodes Hall, open to the university community for large scale genomic analysis, jointly established by the Computational Biology Service Unit (CBSU) and the Cornell Center for Comparative and Population Genomics (3CPG).

What is the CBSU / 3CPG  BioHPC Laboratory for Hands-on Biocomputing?

The BioHPC Laboratory lab is targeted for biologists who want to learn Linux operating system, and do

See "Funding Opportunities" page for more details.

Two 3CPG-relevant faculty searches are underway at Cornell: Statistical Genetics/Canine Genetics/Genomics,  and Computational Biology & Bioinformatics.  See the 3CPG page link on "Jobs" for more information on both positions and how to apply.  Applications due Dec 1, 2010 for both.

Ruth Ley, Dept of Microbiology, and Cornell Center for Comparative and Population Genomics Faculty member, has recently been named recipient of both a 2010 National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Awards and a 2010 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering.   NIH New Innovator Awardees receive $1.5 million over five years.  Ruth’s project proposes to develop immunization strategies to reshape pathogenic microbiomes. The goal is to better understand how the

Larsson Omberg and Jason Mezey (BSCB/Genetic Medicine) in collaboration with colleagues at Weill-Cornell have published a paper on the genomic effects of low level and passive smoking.  Omberg did this work while a 3CPG Scholar.

Cornell Chronicle news article

LA Times news article

Research Article in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine

Updated list of courses of potential interest to grad and undergrad students in the areas of and relevant to comparative, population and evolutionary genomics available for download on the 3CPG web site under "For Grads and Postdocs" menu on the left side of the home page.

Eight Priming Grants were recently funded by 3CPG.  Two others received partial funding along with recommendations for strengthening the proposed projects.  The total amount of the 2009-2010 awards was $151,467 (effective 1/1/2010).  The next solicitation for Priming Grant applications will be in April 2010, with proposals due in May 2010 and funding effective 7/1/2010.  Up to $200,000 is expected to be awarded.

3CPG Priming Grants funded effective 01/01/2010:

Dan Barbash's lab has shown that hybrid incompatibilities between two closely related species of Drosophila, D. simulans and D. melanogaster, are not caused by mutations to protein-coding genes, as in most known cases, but by defects in the packaging of a large region of highly repetitive DNA known as heterochromatin. Their work provides new insights into the molecular basis of speciation. See their paper in PLoS Biology and news coverage in the Cornell Chronicle.

In a comparative study of two species of Hawaiian crickets, Laupala kohalensis and Laupala paranigra, Kerry Shaw's lab has shown that loci associated with male song and female acoustic preferences are genetically linked.  In a recent PNAS paper, they explore the implications of their findings for signal-preference evolution and rates of speciation.